Page 185 of After All This Time

In all honesty, today is hard for me too. Hard since my mind wants to flash back to my dad’s funeral.

It was at Sunset Cove Memorial Gardens. I told myself I never wanted to go back there. Relive the pain. The hurt. The devastation.

I need to be strong.

For Noah.

For Lizzie.

For Laura.

Noah and I don’t speak a word to each other during the entire drive. The silence feels deafening, cold, and depressing.

We turn into the Memorial Gardens.

It’s the same as I remember from almost a decade ago. Tall oak trees scatter the rather large plot of the land. Cars are packed along the side street.

Ironically it’s called Memorial Gardens, when in reality, it’s a cemetery. Guess they wanted to call it something pretty instead of something depressing as hell.

He pulls behind a car on the side street, shifting the gear to park.

My head finds a home in between my thumbs, rubbing curvy motions along my temples.

I’m trying not to lose my shit. My eyes feel heavy, glassy, and irritated.

“Are you okay?” Noah asks.

Now, I’m staring off in the distance.

Nine years ago I was here, sitting in Mom’s car and bracing myself for what I was about to endure. I was saying goodbye to my dad. A man who didn’t deserve to leave the world in the way he did.

He was in his late forties. He had so many years left to live. He won’t see me graduate college or get married. My children won’t have him as their grandfather.

“Dani?” Noah’s voice takes me out of my own personal hell.

“What?”

“You didn’t answer me.”

“I’m fine.” I rub my finger underneath my nose, moving a tendril of hair behind my ear.

“You’re not fine. Talk to me.”

“This day isn’t about me. It’s about you. It’s about celebrating your dad. If we don’t move our asses, our mothers are going to have our heads.”

How is it people wake up every day and not worry about anything? You know, the people who don’t have a million thoughts running through their heads on repeat. The kind of thoughts that consume you when your eyes are tightly shut and when your eyes are wide open.

I wish I could do that and not worry about every little thing, but that’s not how my brain is wired.

I was young when I lost my dad, barely a teenager.

I had to bear the weight of the world, but also the weight of losing my best friend. Some days, the weight is still so heavy it could crush me. Other days, it lingers like it’s waiting to attack.

My life since I was fourteen years old has been in black and white and not like the movies from the 1940s.

I thought I’d never see my life in color again, but I was wrong.

Noah Kaplan has given me the gift of seeing the world in color. The gift of laughing until I cry happy tears. The gift of making me blush so hard my entire body heats up.

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