Waiting for my father to die came in two stages. The latent phase, if I can call it that, started when he came home to get his gun and lasted almost seventeen months. I remember little about him from that era and have few photographs, which makes sense because I doubt be wanted to be seen much. 

He hung around the house, fat and sedated and unable to work. (Who would have hired him, anyway?) I don't know if I was more scared of him during this phase than I'd been before 8/15/73, or less. Attempting to reconstruct some kind of logic from memory and supposition, I suspect I would have been simultaneously both.

More scared because I knew he had committed an act of violence. Less scared because he seemed, so bloated and immobilized, much less capable of doing so again. 

But all my memories of that time are false, all reconstructions. I wouldn't believe anybody who said they knew what it was like. I was there, and I don't even know what it was like.

The second phase came and went like a blink. Once he started dying, I was glad that he finally finished. I remember not crying at his funeral, and a lot of other people failing to do so as well. Some combination of shock and relief. 

We were all better off. 

Still hurts to say that, but it's still true. 

1. WAITING FOR THE END OF THE WORLD
2. THE FASTEST LONG GOODBYE
3. THE LONGEST FAST GOODBYE
4. RICHARD LEAKEY PLAYING GOD IN THE DESERT