Subconsciousness

I had been saddled with the task of burying my father's body. His newly found will stated he wanted to be put in a special coffin and have it sunk to the bottom of the sea. The coffin was made of ship parts and where his head would lay was a submarine window.

The time had come where I had to put the body into the coffin. I didn't want to touch it, and it was horrible. I slid his body off the table into the coffin, and it slipped. I was going to have to actually touch the body to move it all the way into the coffin. I sat there, shaking, not wanting to do it.

And then he moved.

He started laughing, and stood up, and said "surprise!" He told me he had been faking his second death for 5 days, slowing his heart rate so everyone thought he was dead. He told me it was like a really long nap, which he needed since he faked his own death nearly a year ago. He paid someone to give my mom someone else's ashes, and he decided to go off and enjoy the world.

I couldn't believe it. I couldn't believe my dad was not only alive, but he had lied to us...twice! The emotion of everything that had just happened was overwhelming. I screamed at him "You try and fake your own death again and I will PERSONALLY light you on fire myself!"

He approached me to comfort me, and I saw his big stomach, his laughing eyes, his mustache, and I tried to hit him. I wanted to hurt him for hurting me so much, I tried to hit his stomach, and I completely lost energy by the time my fist got to him. I sank to the floor and started sobbing. Big, wracking sobs; the sobs I'd only experienced before when my grandma had a heart attack and I saw her scar and realized what mortality was.

It was the big sobs that broke through and woke up my husband. He shook me awake and I remembered it all. Then it hit me it was back to the beginning; he was dead. Not twice, just once. Next month will be a year since his death.

And I started to softly cry.