Editor of
Features Editor at Death & Taxes Magazine, contributor to The Week, Interview, and Vice Magazine.
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It’s been a fucking year
since Dad died, at around 8am this morning - April 22nd, 2009. Not that you have the date and time memorized. It’s like a tattoo you never wanted - a tangible something that will never go away.
You wake up the same way you’ve woken up for nearly 26 fucking years and look straight up, staring at the ceiling. It’s grey outside and your stomach is fuzzy from the beers the night before. Your tongue still tastes of nearly half a pack of cigarettes; your jeans on the floor bearing the grim stains of the burrito that fell apart on the way back from the bar. It’s grey outside and there’s a lot to think about this morning.
Like how you’d been drunk for the majority of the last year. Not in a fun way, either. Too many mornings waking up and not knowing who’s couch you were sleeping on that day. Your drinking garnered you a reputation as a bit of a lush, and what a lush! You could drink for America in the Olympics with that liver. Your reputation is pretty low on the list of things you have to worry about. There’s emails to answer and work to be done and you’re not sleeping on couches anymore. These four walls and the ceiling you’re still staring at need to be paid for.
The intitial summer after he died was a total blur and you remember very little of it. You remember South America and the girl you met down there. You’ve still got the gift she gave you. It’s on the windowsill, and the sun is starting to peek out between the clouds, illuminating the wooden dancing ladies forever caught in their dancing moment. You remember dancing with her and how at least for a couple of songs - a few minutes - nothing else in the world other than you and her and the music seemed to exist and for once since he’d died you felt alive and - my god, is that a smile? You remember how everything about that trip carried a fluid electricity. You remember everything. Like watching yourself on a security camera.
You remember Chicago, too, and how the cold reminded you of hard work. Beers with Gus, and waking up in Francesca’s bed in the attic with her cats jumping all over you like a human trampoline while she slept at her boyfriends downstairs. You could see your breath in the air, but it didn’t matter for everything was balanced in that town.
You basically lived your life out in the open for the last year, journaling in public where everyone could read it. It goes against everything every great writer ever told you: don’t show people half finished work. It’s garnered you a bit of a reputation as an attention whore. That was true. But that has always been true. You can take the boy out of Hollywood but you’ll never take the Hollywood out of the boy…
You remember the last time you saw him, at the end of the driveway at your parents house in San Jose. You remember hugging him Goodbye and how when you replay that moment over in your head the sky seems black for some reason, and his face looked pained. You think he knew he was going to die. You think you knew, too, somewhere deep down. There aren’t any negative memories of the man because you both always lived every day together like it was your last. That was it. That was the secret. Now you have twenty five years of amazing memories; it was the greatest gift he could have ever given after death. Twenty five years of amazing memories forever on the marquee of the movie theater inside your head. Come one, come all. Step right up - it’s free admission.
You remember Hollywood; making promises with the moon and the empty bottle that you’d never, ever give up or settle for anything short of success. You remember sitting down to write a book about your Dad not a week after he died, and you remember all the empty cigarette packets that accumulated as you sat and wrote and wrote and wrote until the morning all summer long. It’s been a while since you’ve written in it, but 130 pages down. Not too shabby.
You remember the last time you talked to him, standing at the corner of Eagle Rock and Colorado Boulevard waiting for the light to change. You remember saying Goodbye to him the same way you always had, father to son, love you Dad thanks love you too, and when you hung up the light took forever to change. You waited and waited and waited and pressed the button a hundred times. “Come on”, you said “Come on you fucking thing, I just want to get home”. You cursed and kicked the gravel. Sometimes putting one foot infront of the other can be the hardest thing to do.
Then the light changed. Best foot forward, now… sometimes putting one foot infront of the other is the only thing you CAN do.
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herdivineshadow reblogged this from nedhepburn and added:
My dad died a year and 5 months ago. Since I don’t like the taste of alcohol, I’ve not spent a lot of the last year...
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vinaigrette reblogged this from nedhepburn and added:
I. Wow. It’s been 13 years since my dad died. The first year is the worst, or at least the first year that you realize...
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baravettski said:
powerful. stay up my friend.
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