Memoir Draft: Title TBD

Sarena Brown

When someone dies, sad people send you casseroles. Lots of casseroles… lasagna, too. The same goes for when your mom is in the hospital and your dad has no idea what he is doing when there are four kids to look after and household to run.

In the spring of 2012, that was us. Concerned friends and neighbors dropped off cookies, brownies, and more green bean casseroles than I’ve seen in my life, because we were kids and my dad was my dad and my mom was out of commission for some time. The food was so thoughtful, but in the same stroke utterly thought-less. I mean, casseroles don’t have the power to free my mom from illness, to find my love, or to fix my family. It’s all just food. A casserole is a casserole is a casserole.

Our freezer was overwhelmed with Pyrex containers and dishes covered in tin foil. We had to eat something from our new-found hoard every single day to make room. Of course I was most concerned with the double chocolate chunk brownies, but I can’t recall the tastes. I only remember how nauseous I was each time I remembered that mom wasn’t here right now. Dad couldn’t pull off being Mr. Mom for much longer. He wasn’t around much then, or maybe I had gotten so good at make-believing he wasn’t there that he actually went poof? Not likely.

All I know for sure is that his food sucked then and sucks now. He makes three signature dishes on rotation. Well, four if you count the 69 cent Ramen packages. Five if you count “Chicken of The Sea” canned Tuna.  Wait, I remember we used to have midnight snacks a lot, just him and me. His PB & J toast with extra butter always hit the spot. I can’t remember the last time we did something like that, where we enjoyed each other’s company and nothing was forced. Must have been before ninth grade, at least. Must have been before I knew him to be anything other than My Cool Dad™.  

Where he is concerned, my brothers are and have always been around. It was hard to have quality time with a parent when you’ve got four brothers and none of you have social lives outside of playing catch in the front yard. It is alright, though. I like it better that way, with my brothers here. They normally talk with pops about baseball and working out as I let my mind wander. It makes his food less terrible, being all in my thoughts. I’m a day-dreamer, you see. Kind of like my mom, but maybe more starry-eyed. I romanticize things too much, or so I’ve been told... things that don’t need romanticizing, like the musty smell of old books or the texture of burnt grilled cheese or my mother being in the fucking hospital. Spoiler alert: she was okay. She is doing okay right now.

You see I’ve been thinking about death. My mom’s father, we call him Dadu. So this weekend he was mid-flight, flying through Denver when he had an arrhythmia. I don’t know exactly what that means, other than his heart beat went out of whack and so they diverted the plane. He was taken to the University of Colorado Hospital, which is apparently very good. My mom said there was something off about his heart valves? I don’t know for sure, but last night he had a procedure to get a pacemaker. I don’t know how it went. I don’t know if he is stable. I think he is. I hope he is. He can’t just die, you know, with no warming.

Like, no thanks Mother Nature because that isn’t how life is supposed to end. The dream is to die in bed peacefully surrounded by your family and the people you love, even if you in life were hard to love. Dadu is hard to love. He is abusive and volatile, and sexist and a little racist, but he is still family and doesn’t need to die just yet.

I remember being in middle school when he’d come through the front door of my mom’s house on Saturday mornings, holding Burger King Breakfasts for us kids. He is typically an angry, tense man, but on these mornings his tiny smirk would light up the entire house. I still crave the croissant sandwiches with egg, sausage and cheese. Sometimes they’d surprise me by not burning the croissant. And there is something special about the orange juice cartons. It took forever to poke through the hole with my thumb. There is something about that thick red straw, and the tiny tater tot rounds that pop so quickly into your mouth. You don’t realize you’ve eaten all of them before they’re gone.    

You don’t realize what you had until it’s gone. Fuck. I guess that is life. You see I’ve been thinking about death. Hence the condolence casseroles. Then my mom and the tangent about my dad. Then thinking about what has been really eating me; Dadu possibly dying. Sometimes in the middle of the night fear takes over, and all I am is afraid. Not of death but of waiting for it to happen, and for the aftertaste. One day everyone I love, everyone I’ve seen, is going to die. I’m not okay with that. Maybe that is why my dad has found and lost god more times than I can count. Maybe that is why I’m not looking for Him.

Maybe this life is really just one big casserole: full of flavor but sometimes just too much to consume, made up of indistinguishable chaos. But you can find comfort in all the motion. And most times, even bad casseroles are still good. Hard lives are still lived. And life is supposedly a gift. Like the Reese’s cups my mom put in my backpack before school. Even melted ones are still good.