I can see the sadness in my fathers’ eyes when we go into the cemetery. When he watches me walk out ahead of him through the headstones, down each row with the lilies in my hand until we finally reach my mother’s gravestone, I can sense his heart breaking.

“Anna, Let’s go home now, ok honey?”

“Ok daddy”

I turn to kiss my mother’s name, written in stone, before I rush back between the headstones, my tiny work boots slip-sliding through the wet grass, and rush into my fathers arms. I kiss him on the cheek and take his hand, my little fingers knotting into his rough and callused hands. His big black pick-up is waiting for us at the gate. A web of safety anticipating our return.

That truck is like a personification of my father. It’s big and intimidating and loud. It’s very loud. The inside smells of hunting and cigarette smoke. The seats carry the odor of scent away and spilled Dunkin Donuts’  blueberry iced  coffee with mocha. It’s impeccably clean, the only mess is the strange array of feathers, dead plants and animal bones on the dashboard (which I’ve tried to clean up many times and it always seems to show up again).

Whenever I sit in it I’m reminded of when I was little; coloring in pictures of deer and star wars characters that he’d drawn for me, struggling to look through binoculars at the owl in the tree across from us, running through the woods after his long loping strides, and sleeping in the back seat on the way home from a long day in the bow shop. It reminds me of when I was so little I could ride around on his shoulders through Walmart, when my legs were too short to go over the  logs and creeks in the woods on my own  and he had to carry me across. Wherever we went that truck took us. It was our chariot, our Ironhide, it was whatever we needed it to be.

But all that was well after my mother died, long after the cancer that killed her had settled into her lungs and choked the breath out of her. I was four when this happened. All I am able to remember of her is bloody tissues in the trash by her bed and her shiny bald head. I also remember how much she loved me. I remember her telling my father and I stories about fairies and dragons when she could. She always told my father to write them down so that he could tell them to me after she… well, you know.

When I was little I had a support group that consisted of my dad’s hunting buddies. They were, and still are, like my uncles. When my mom first died they were constantly cycling through my house helping take care of me until my dad got back on his feet. They had already raised their children and knew ‘the ropes of raising kids’ as they always said to me. They were very talented in the art of keeping me entertained and happy whenever our dog, a giant wolfhound named Aaron, didn’t work.

They managed to teach me most of those random facts that dads just seem to carry around in their back pockets, plus all the knowledge of the forest that they knew. That’s basically what my days before real school consisted of. Wandering around the woods, getting muddy and dirty while one of them followed me around rambled on about how some animal like this tree better for this reason or how the deer had certain paths that they always traveled on and if you ever stepped in it they would notice. Useful life lessons like that, you know?

But now, as a 14 year old, things are not quite so innocent and happy. My loving father has become tired and worn out over the years. I don’t know when he changed from the active and happy middle-aged hunter and into the older-than-his-age man. He used to run and play with me all day long and now he barely seems able to take care of himself. It seems as if everyday he is more and more tired, more and more unwilling to get out of bed in the morning, to drive me to school or go to work or walk the dog.

“Daddy? Wake up, it’s time to go to your shift. Remember I’m coming with you today? I have to take the inventory down at the shop?”

“hmm?” He answers, his voice is thick with sleep, “I… I’m up, I’m up. Did you make me some coffee?”

“Just the way you like it daddy” I say with a smile.

“That’s my little lady…”

This is how it is almost every night for him and I. I wake him up and drag him out to the truck, that faithful old thing, bringing our dinner and my homework with me. Then we’ll sit in the shop until nine, him helping customers and me cleaning and doing  the odd jobs that need being done, until we get home at nine-thirty. Then I go to bed while he watches the History channel until he falls asleep. Again.

I feel as if he is sinking farther and farther into a deep, dark hole filled with murky water. The more he sinks the harder it is for me to keep hold of his hand and if his hand slips out of mine I will lose him forever. I think he has almost gone from me. His eyes used to light up when he told stories to me at night and now they are dull and blank as a sheet of paper. He used to draw for me and guide my hand as I made rainbows across his canvas. Now all he does is sit at the kitchen table staring into his hands.

It’s been ten years since my mother died. I think her ghost is starting to haunt my father again. He seems to be slipping into her world. I don’t need him slipping into that place again. That is not a good place. He feels as if he could have saved her, as if he could have done more to keep her alive. This has happened once before and it was not pretty.

My daddy is a quiet drunk. He sulks in the corner and goes about his business as if nothing is wrong. It’s his way of convincing the world that he’s fine. That nothing is wrong. When in all reality everything is wrong. This morning when I went to make him his morning coffee and hash browns he was already up and about. There were two cans of Budweiser in the trash. By noon there will be at least five or six. He can’t do this again, not when I need him so much. I can’t let him do this to himself again. As soon as he heads to work at the bow shop I set to work. I go and drain the remaining Budweiser into the dirt out back and empty the house of any and all liquor.

When he comes home I’m waiting for him. In my hands are pictures from when I was little. One of us walking hand in hand down the beach another, my favorite, of us where I’m sitting in his lap on the tailgate of his truck. I’m probably five or six in this one and I’m waving and laughing at whomever is taking the picture, most likely Dwayne the nature photographer of the group, with my wild blond mess of hair flying into my dad’s face. He’s laughing and trying to keep me on his lap. I love this picture. In it everything seems so happy. The sun is shining, the woods are green and alive, and my dad and I are smiling and laughing.

When he gets home I wordlessly hand him the pictures.

.     .      .  

It’s been two months. My daddy is back from that cold place where he lived for so long. Yet  sometimes I feel him drifting back into the abyss. I cannot follow him there, I need to be able to pull him out. I need to know that I can do that again and again until he is back. I need to see that light in his eyes again, like in that picture of us nine years ago. I need things to be the way they always were. The way it was when I was little. Sitting in the big black pickup, coloring in the faces of a different universe and time.