2003-09-05 1:35 a.m.
5 days ago...

The last time I updated was 5 days ago. 5 days ago, Jake was still swimming in his vase. 5 days ago, a Hispanic immigrant was still working his fingers to the bone in the kitchen of a local greasy spoon, doing his best with the life he was given. 5 days ago, Joe was still telling dirty jokes and smiling his mischievous, little-boy smile. No more. 5 days ago, I was not thinking about who would whisper the right words to me when I was stuck; I was not wondering who pays for the burial of an illegal immigrant, or how they manage to find what family he has in his native land to notify them of his death; I was not thinking about how a daughter, as long as she still has her father, will be fiercely protected and want for nothing. No more. No more.

On Sunday morning, I awoke to find my Jake's vase tipped over, most of the water on the desktop and the floor. He, himself, was in the open desk drawer. Still. So still. I scooped him up in my hand; he twitched, I had hope. But when I dropped him back into what water remained in his vase, he moved no more. Saturday, I go to bury him in Mom's garden among all the other beloved pets of my past. In the interim, he is in a jewelry box in my freezer. I moved my entire cactus collection onto the desk, but it's not the same. The cacti don't have such good ideas, and they insist upon talking to me all at once, which, of course, is no help at all.

The only traffic light along Route 17 in New York State hangs just outside of the store where I work. Its presence there, asinine as it is to have a traffic light on a highway, is something the local people have become accustomed to over the years. Another thing they have become accustomed to, due to the presence of this traffic light, is grisly scenes of dismemberment and death. You may think I am exaggerating. I'm not. Imagine this scene: 10 PM, fog, pre-thunderstorm. A lone figure is crossing the highway on foot, carrying the night's purchases from the convenience store to his home, a dilapidated old apartment building, no doubt chosen for its cheap rent and close proximity to his dishwashing job at the diner. He crosses this intersection every day. Home to work. Work to home. Home to store. Store to home. But on this day, he does not make it as far as home. Instead, he waits for the light to turn green. He begins his trek across the highway. And in the next moment, he is thrown as a car comes hurtling down the highway. This driver keeps going. A few minutes later, another motorist does not notice the body in his lane until it is too late. Nor do the next four. Flesh and bone and teeth are splattered upon the lone driver who has parked her car and is frantically, furiously, rabidly attempting to slow the traffic, to keep any more drivers from unwittingly becoming partners in this crime. The police are called, the rain begins its torrent. And a man lies dead and mutilated in the gutter. The radio said today that they are still trying to locate his next of kin. I can't help but imagine a family, a wife and children, or a mother and father, somewhere far away and doing the best that they can, eagerly awaiting the weekly phone call from their husband, father, son. Or waiting for that envelope to be delivered in the mail, the one that contains the money with which they will eat that month. The envelope that is never to arrive.

Joe Fiddle was the owner of the store I have worked at for the past five years. He built his four businesses up from scratch and rumor has it that he had a million in the bank by the time he was thirty. He loved where he lived and the people he lived along with. He was 67 years old. He died on Sunday and was buried on Monday (according to the Jewish religion, the deceased must be buried before sundown of the day following the death). I attended the funeral. I wept. At first, I wept for the grief of the family and friends of this man. His three daughters spoke, and as they were speaking, I wept for myself. These are grown women, in their thirties and forties. But up there on the podium, all I could see, all I could hear, all I could feel, were three lonely, scared little girls. And I began to think; as long as a daughter has her father, she also has his protection. I have my father. I have his love. And no matter what crimes against him I might have committed, what harsh words I might have thrown his way, what injustices I might have thought I had suffered at his hands, my father never has and never will do me wrong. So to those of you who, at 14 or 15 or 16, are feeling the heat of anger and hate at the unfairness of a father's punishment, or to those of you who, at 25 or 30 or 40 or 50, are feeling the weight of many years of bitterness and disagreement and what you may think are irreconcilable differences, listen up: we are all living on borrowed time. Make the best of it while you still can, for words cost nothing to say. I love you, Pa.

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