Aug 29 | A Blank Cassette, Part 2 (Letters from the Coast)

This is the second in a three-part series on the death of my father.

 

Years later, around Christmastime, I was visiting my stepmother. We went to a solstice party. It was fun for most of the night, and then I got drunk and tried to jam with her friends, many of whom had been his friends as well.

I had one of his guitars. It didn’t have a strap, and it felt so different from his Martin, the one I used at home.

I couldn’t keep up.

I don’t think I’ve ever felt so embarrassed.

I choked out, “Can someone please…um…please take this?” and handed it off and walked away.

I sat in the living room and cried silently. My husband tried to comfort me.

Eventually, my stepmother joined me.

“What’s wrong? Why aren’t you playing?”

“I can’t,” I rasped. “I’m no good at it. I’m just embarrassing everyone.”

“No you’re not,” she said. “C’mon, go join them.”

I wouldn’t. And after a few more awkward minutes, it finally came out, as I was hoping it never would:

“You had a whole life together that I will never be a part of. You tell me that he haunts you, haunts the house. He has never haunted me. All I feel is silence. All I feel is never being able to fully know if he loved me.”

She was appalled. “Of course he loved you. He loved you more than anything.”

“You’re secure in your love, in your story. I will never be.”

She tried to insist, and I know that she’s right. Everyone has always told me how much he loved me.

But it was because he told them.

Not me.

Never me.

 

We went home that night and I fell into bed. As usual, my stepmother stayed up late, listening to music. Some of it was probably his.

This was something my husband often complained about, that the music would go on and on no matter how late it was and no matter whether there were already other people asleep.

It was hard for me too. It felt like the lack of silence between my dad and his beloved of twenty-five years was being flaunted.

I know it wasn’t.

But it felt that way sometimes.

 

In the morning, I woke up blearily. There was so much snow on the ground, and more was falling. Snow and cold are silent too.

For some reason, I wandered into Dad’s old study. His old computer was there, and bits and bobs scattered about. I remembered going into that room a few days after he had died and finding his reading glasses, and how they had torn me in half, how I wailed over them. How could he be gone? His glasses are right here. Surely there’s been some mistake.

Now on the desk was a cassette tape.

I frowned, picked it up.

My eyes widened.

Neatly written on the liner paper was a set of songs that I had not seen together since 1994.

I brought it into the kitchen, where my stepmother was starting on breakfast.

“Where did you find this?” I asked.

She looked at it. “In the basement somewhere. Is that our wedding mix-tape?”

“No. This is a tape Dad made for me when I was…like, two years old,” I babbled. “He was afraid that I would forget his voice because he was away so much, so he made this for me. I listened to it until it fell apart. I thought that was the only copy in the world. I never thought I’d see it again.”

She smiled and continued prepping. “Heh. He gave you a Christmas present.”

It was so casual for her.

For me it was earth-shattering.

“He’s haunted me after all,” I sobbed to my husband.