Happy Birthday, Dad

Or, What to Buy for the Guy Who Has Everything

Happy birthday, Dad. For your birthday… I didn’t get you anything, I’m sorry.

I thought about a journal for you to write your thoughts in, because you always loved to write but never really had time to write for yourself, or about yourself, and what else is there anymore? I’d be curious to know what you’ve been up to, and how it all works! But, and forgive me if this sounds harsh, I don’t mean it to be, but—do you even have hands? And if so, sorry for asking, of course you do, but then, are the hands you have connected to thoughts? I realize that hands without thoughts would be pretty useless. All the times your hands came up and stopped just short told me you had lots of thoughts. And anyway, I can’t give you a journal because we haven’t figured out how to transmit concrete objects through space yet.

I don’t regret it though. Not getting you a journal. I imagine you at your desk in your old office, my old-old bedroom, with your back to me, your back curved forward like the slope of a mountain over this tiny journal scratched up with your thoughts—and the secret of it, the shadow over and the boundary of sharp peaks of your half-cursive around the contents make me feel so lonely. You gave me lots of journals but I never wrote in them. It never felt right. I still have them actually, and I suspect they’re still pristine because that’s what I wanted to be to you.

You were always hard to buy for, guy-who-has-everything, with your house filled with stuff you afforded from your career where you were valued and traveling and buying the things people buy when there’s nothing left to want for. What else? What else can I get you?

Today it’s your birthday and now that you’re dead it feels even more important to get you something. Who else knows it’s your birthday? Did they get you vanilla? Are your feet up? Is someone petting your head? Who, now that you’re dead, is going to throw you a party?

I know it’s stupid, to care so much about a day when I know there are no dates where you are. But here, if you remember—how much do you remember?—we’re boxed into 24-hour blinks in unending succession marked only by the fuzzy edges of unconsciousness when the sky is dark, if we’ve done it right, corresponding with a number in a grid with a picture of kittens or puppies or deep ocean creatures above it to endear us to the program. Never mind what you taught me, that it does end, even though the calendar pages go on and on and this January there were puppies on the cover that didn’t exist before, even now that you do not.

Perhaps that’s why your birthday feels so important. I finally know what to get you. I know the one thing you don’t have, what you wanted so desperately you lifted your hand and let it rest on top of mine, your voice grew soft and permeable, each breath out begging a new one to take its place, until you lost it. One minute you had one, and then you didn’t. Now I want to give it back.

Where can I find a life? Brookstone? Sky Mall? How do I get it to you? Does it have mass, or does it travel like radio waves? Is there a standard box, one that can stretch to fit the occasional enormity of it as well as the moments it feels packed in like a lead ball? How much despair and reality versus how much surprise and exuberant joy? Do I curate it for you or let it meander? Need it have purpose? Importance? How will I know you got it? How will I know you like it? Would it be okay if I keep some for myself?