We were quiet for a second. Not the brittle silence from the kitchen, but a comfortable sort of silence. Dad breathed, and I breathed, and I sank into the couch under the weight of his arm.
“Hey, Dad?”
“Yeah?”
“Are you really doing okay?”
Dad hit pause (the teaser for “The Visitor” had just started) and looked at me. “Why do you ask?”
“It’s just, last time you were home, you said you were depressed.”
Dad’s mouth twisted to the side.
“And you seem...”
“What?”
Rumpled was the first word that came to mind.
But I couldn’t say that.
I couldn’t.
“Tired,” I said instead.
And then I said, “Sad.”
And then, because I didn’t know when to shut up, I said, “Lonely.”
Dad sighed. He stared at the screen and ran the back of his index finger under his lip, tracing the gaps in his beard.
I wanted Dad to say something. To answer me.
But instead, he wrapped his arm around me again, grabbed the remote, and hit play.
“The Visitor” is one of the best episodes ofStar Trek: Deep Space Nine. It’s about Captain Sisko’s son, Jake, trying to bring his dad home after he gets lost in time.
It was just my luck, watching an episode like that, when my own grandfather was lost to me forever.
When I was afraid I was losing my dad to depression.
The last time Dad’s depression got really bad, we lost each other for almost seven years.
I didn’t think I could take it if he drifted away from me again.
Next to me, Dad was crying. Not just a single tear, like he usually had, but full-on crying. He sniffed and wiped his eyes and then he made this sound, like a groan or a whimper, and he pulled me so close to him I thought he was going to crush me.
I wrapped my arm around him too, and we held each other for a long time.
“Dad?” I asked, once it seemed like he had calmed down enough to talk.
“Sorry.” Dad wiped his eyes with the backs of his hands. “That just really got to me.”
“It’s okay. Really.”
I wanted Dad to know it was okay for him to cry in front of me.
When the episode was over, and the ending credits played, I handed him a couple Kleenex and used one to blow my nose.
