I thought I’d be happier to step onto American soil. It was home, after all. I thought it would be comforting or reassuring or something. I thought it would feel like home. But looking at the giant ass American flag across from the escalator came with an emotion I didn’t expect: numbness. I stood in front of it for at least thirty seconds taking in the overall hugeness of it. It had to be taller than me, visible from countless hallways that funnel into the baggage claim. Something about it seemed off—the red was too red, blue too blue. Maybe I was gone too long.
That morning felt so far away. I woke up on the other side of the world, threw some things in a bag, and called a cab. No one even knew I was gone—not even my best friend. Well, at some point during the day everyone probably figured it out, but I couldn’t bring myself to turn my Irish phone on. I wasn’t ready. The American phone was one thing—my brother needed to know I landed, that I was coming home. Dublin didn’t need anything from me right now.
My American phone buzzed as I got off the escalator. The text from my brother was simple: can’t pick you up from Charlotte. see you in Durham. Just as I was heading into the public area where people waited for their family, friends, loved ones with signs and hopeful, dopey looks on their faces. For a second, I wondered what they saw on mine.
Another two hours alone with my thoughts was the last thing I wanted, but unless I was able to shell out another $300 for a flight to Durham, I didn’t have a choice. I also didn’t have much more than $29 for a bus ticket and a flight back to Dublin. The last-minute trans-Atlantic flights drained my account, even with the bereavement rate—the airlines lowered the price a lot for deaths and funerals, but not quite enough. Believe it or not, my barista job didn’t exactly leave me with a great savings account. No one warned me about that, either, when I decided to go to school in Europe. No one was like “hey, here’s the thing, you’ll have a great time, but getting back for a funeral will be almost impossible and you’ll have to work a month of double shifts when you get back”. I’m not sure I would have even listened to them if they’d tried. And who would have said it? My family? Unlikely. We were so deep into that ocean of denial, it’s a miracle we didn’t drown.
The same thoughts crept into my mind over and over, constantly, during the three-hour bus ride. No music shut them up, no books drove them away. My mind kept reminding me why I was back. Why I wasn’t in the noisy halls of the boarding house or the damp museums or the over-heated cafes.
The truth was this: Alzheimer’s was an ugly fucking disease. A bitch.
No one ever really told me that before my grandfather got sick. People always shrugged it off, as if it wasn’t just as devastating as any other disease that could take someone’s life. Sometimes, it was slow, as if that made it any better. Like getting to watch someone I loved wither away—one memory at a time, one word or phrase out of place, followed by a story, then a name, a little bit of anger, overwhelming frustration, constant blame—was something that I should have been thankful for. Fuck that.
As the bus pulled into the station in Durham, I tried to remember the last time I actually said anything out loud. Before I got the news, probably. So, at least two days. Maybe three. Quite the record I set for myself. Finally, I remembered. Three nights before, when my grandfather, the only father I’d ever known was just “sick”, not “dead”, my best friend came to my room after dinner.
“We need to talk about this, Liz.”
“Talk about what?”
“You can’t just pretend bad things don’t happen. You need to talk about them.”
“I’ll pass, but thanks for stopping by.” I motioned to the door in a not-so-subtle gesture that would have worked perfectly well back home.
“He’s sick, right? Alex and I are trying to help.”
“Bullshit, you’re trying to make me grieve. He’s not dead. He can come back from this. You two just feel guilty about fucking behind my back.”
“We weren’t fucking behind your back. He asked me out and I said no.”
“And then you said yes.”
“Fine. I said yes.”
“You did that knowing exactly how I felt about him. You didn’t even tell me. I’ve lived with both of you for two years and you couldn’t bring yourself to tell me you’re doing whatever it is you’re doing. That means you’re guilty of something. I had to find out from those shithead Californians at school. Some best friend.” I watched her face turn paler. That comment was probably too far. But grief makes a great incentive for fighting.
“Look. I’m not here to fight about Alex, okay?”
“This has nothing to do with Alex, Eloa. It has to do with our friendship and the fact that you picked fucking a guy I like over my feelings. The fact that you think this is about Alex says everything I need to know.”
“This isn’t about Alex! Or us. This is about the fact that your grandfather is dying and you’re ignoring it. I’ve just gone through this with my Grandma. She raised me. She was my mother. I know what it’s like.” I could see Alex creeping right outside the open door, wondering whether or not he should step in.
“No offense or anything, but you don’t know shit about my life back home.”
“Okay,” El said, making her way to the door. “Well, when you break down, I’ll be here. We’ll both be here”
“I won’t break down,” I commented as she walked back into the hallway to meet up with the guy that could split us apart.
“Right.”
The sight of my brother standing next to his beat-up Honda reminded me why I was there—as subtle as a sucker punch. His brown curls bounced out of his head even further than usual, the remnants of my father’s jew-fro evident in his DNA. He looked like my dad, my grandfather, my great-grandfather. Every first-born male in my family looked like carbon copies of one another in varying shades of grey. They’re like those evolution pictures that are interesting to viewers but also kind of unsettling at the same time.
“Welcome home,” my brother said as he opened the trunk of the Honda. Instead of responding, I set my lips in a tight smile and hoped that would be it for the discussion portion of our reunion. He kept asking—how was school, what were my professors like, how different was everything, could I understand people when they talked? Question after question pounded in my brain. He could be so intense sometimes, just like my mother. So nosy and prying and nagging. Sometimes I just needed him to shut the hell up.
I thought about telling him about El—about all of the drama back home (and how I’d started to consider Dublin home), but I knew he would spin it to be my fault. Because I was the constant let down: always blaming other people for my own bullshit. Somehow it would be my fault that El and Alex fucked behind my back, knowing exactly what that would do to our friendship. I wasn’t stupid or completely unreasonable, I knew we’d get over it. I wanted to be mad. Just for a little while.
“Really? First, you left and now you won’t even talk? What the fuck, Liz?”
I thought about responding, but really, what was there to say? Sorry? I wasn’t. And even if I was, it wouldn’t be enough. Sorry for leaving mom to take care of my grandfather alone? Sorry my brother became the only source of income since Mom had to quit her job? Sorry our grandfather died? Something about it still didn’t work. Now, I didn’t even feel at home in the country my grandfather defended with his life.
My mind flashed back to when I left for Dublin. My grandfather was excited for me—he told me to go explore, fuck with life a little, but to be careful because Irish food wasn’t as good as it looked, and neither were Irish men. “Just come back to us, okay?” he said at the airport, watching from his wheelchair—his 6’4 frame was always just a little too big for the wheelchair, his knees looked uncomfortably high. But his smile was beautiful and trusting. “Always,” I replied, knowing how stupid it sounded. But it was true.
My mom and brother never understood why I wanted to go. If I was going to college, Charlotte would be the same as Europe—why did I need to be so far away? I tried explaining that school in Dublin was cheaper, even with room and board and flights. They didn’t listen. My grandfather fought on my behalf: I needed to get out and see more than North Carolina. I needed to learn other languages and meet people from different countries and learn how beautiful the world could be. He said that seeing the world was the reason he joined the Navy; he had been tired of the grey gloom of Baltimore and just signed up without telling his parents. They disowned him after that. Maybe that’s why he fought for me to go.
It freaked me out knowing that two years had passed since that day. Two years didn’t really seem that long. Days passed faster in Dublin. The walk across town would take about an hour each way, work would take ten, class would take four. Dinner and game nights and bars would take up whatever was left. Some people moved out, new ones moved in. There were so many laughs and jokes and drunk stories that I couldn’t keep track of, friends I would most likely fall out of touch with eventually. But the physical distance made me wonder if any of it ever even happened. What if it was all a vivid hallucination? I heard that could happen to people under immense amounts of stress.
“Mom’s doing okay, by the way.” My brother said over the music blasting through the radio. “I mean, you didn’t ask about her, but I assume you want to know before we get there.” They were so similar: for as much as he looked like our dad, he acted exactly like our mom.
I noticed how his posture continued to square off, to stiffen, with each mile we covered. He was pissed. Understandable. I left them when they needed me the most in order to fucking galivant around Europe under the guise of studying. They had to deal with it all themselves—the old age, the routine, the doctors’ appointments, the fights. I checked in once a week, listened to them bitch about the pills or the money or the help they couldn’t find.
When we first got the diagnosis, we did our best, tried sticking to a routine: getting him up in the morning, giving him his meds, making breakfast, taking him on a walk, physical therapy, more meds, showers when we could get them, make dinner, let him sit outside for long enough but not too long because the summer heat could give him a stroke (literally), bring him inside, beg him to eat, the last of the meds, dessert, and put him to bed. Then there was the cleaning and the anxiety attacks and the breakdowns and the reminders to be patient and understanding and kind and empathetic. No synonym for “devastating” would ever do justice to the reality.
And then I left. I said fuck the panic attacks and the constant stress—I wasn’t made for that life, I couldn’t take it the way they could. I was weak where they were strong; just another thing that separated me from my perfect family: the selfless mother, the valedictorian son, and the fuckup daughter.
The house was just how I remembered, but smaller. The nautical navy blue siding was faded into a dull lifeless blue-grey, the grass was even more overgrown than usual—something about the place screamed “disheveled”. I wondered whether or not my mom got a letter from the Homeowners Association yet—they were pretty quick to complain about anything being less than perfect. If it hadn’t come yet, it would soon.
“Liz?” My mother asked after she opened the door. “What are you doing here?”
“Hi, Mom.” I said with a tight smile before I turned my attention to my brother. “You didn’t tell her I was coming?” I screeched.
“I didn’t think it was pertinent.” Typical douchebag.
“Pertinent? Really? Try fucking decent.”
“Elizabeth, language.” My mom’s eyes were red and bloodshot, the exhaustion was seeping out of her, threatening to swallow the whole family. “He would be glad you’re here.” She wiped at her eyes quickly, before I could tell if she was actually crying or not. There was a heaviness to the atmosphere in the house that I’d never noticed before—it only partially came from the death of my grandfather. I could still feel him there. I almost expected him to call out from his small room next to the kitchen. But he didn’t. And then I was hit with the realization that I would never hear his voice again.
He was the father figure: the one who taught me to tie my shoes, how to drive a car, enforced the midnight curfews, grounded me when my mom was busy working twelve-hour shifts and my dad was too much of a piece of shit to show his face (which was always). I was so young when my grandfather moved in with us, I can’t remember it—he’s just always been there, like the seasons changing or dawn and dusk.
Unchanging.
Until it changed.
“The funeral’s tomorrow, so I hope you brought something appropriate,” my mother said before leaving the room. Just a nice little reminder of how I embarrassed her in the past. How was I to know, at five years old, what was appropriate for a funeral? Better yet, why would she have let me pick out my own outfit for such a somber event? Five minutes back home and we’d already fallen into a comfortable pattern—her shaming me, me reacting out of spite, and my brother standing perfectly on the sidelines, ready to uphold the family reputation.
“I’m sure she brought a nice black dress.” He said, side-eyeing me in the process. Apparently, he wasn’t sure of shit.
“Of course,” I said. I dug through my suitcase and hung up a dress I bought for ten quid at the big Penney’s on O’Connell Street—why should I pay more than a few bucks for a dress I’ll never be able to even look at after tomorrow?
The whole night was filled with small talk and silence, strangers sleeping in the same house. I didn’t realize how much my grandfather pulled us all together—maybe this was our new normal: never-ending silence and uneasiness. Awkwardness. I wanted to talk to my family, to share in their grief and heartache, learn how to deal with it together. But, for the millionth time, I didn’t open my mouth when I had the chance. Story of my life.
The only other funeral I’d gone to was for my grandmother when I was five—when my mom let me pick out my outfit because she was too busy helping my grandfather and I had to get ready on my own “like a big girl”. I went dressed as the pink power ranger—full on Halloween costume with the helmet and everything. I didn’t remember much else, only the violently pink plastic costume and my mother having a shit fit. I’ve never remembered my grandmother enough to grieve her. I’m sure I did at some point, but I don’t know when. Maybe I mentioned I missed her to my mother when I was six, or asked about her at some point when I was seven, but the only thing I still associated with her was homemade grits and the smell of 18-year-old scotch.
My grandfather’s was different than the ones I’d seen on TV. The casket wasn’t fancy mahogany or whatever the fuck they use in Hollywood. My mother said it was “what we could afford”, as if worms eating away at him in that made it any different than the worms eating away at him in mahogany with silk lining. There weren’t many people either—just a few he knew from the VFW and church who looked at us like the heathens we were.
For a second, I thought about turning on my Irish phone and texting El. I wanted to tell her about all of these holier-than-thou 80 year old’s dressed like the Queen of England looking down on me for being such a disappointment.
“Your grandfather was such a good, upstanding man,” a little old lady said, clutching my wrists. “I hope you make him proud. Come back home and help with your mother.” I was even disappointing strangers—that was a new low.
“Thanks?” I said, not sure whether or not I’d get lectured for that response. For such a small lady, her grip was hard and strong like the rest of the Great Generation’s.
“Elizabeth,” my mom said, coming up to me after Old Lady Iron Grip finally left me alone. “You could at least look like you’re grieving. You haven’t shed a tear the whole time.”
“Everyone grieves differently, Mother.”
“That may be true, dear, but you don’t seem to be grieving at all.”
Maybe she was right. People usually cried when someone died. They broke down. They became irrational and irritable and messy. I didn’t do any of that. I sat in silence for three days thinking about the pink power ranger costume I wore to my grandmother’s funeral fifteen years before. What the fuck was wrong with me.
She scanned my knee-length black dress with the pearl detailing around the sleeves and I had to stop myself from gagging. I looked like Julianna Margulies in The Good Wife if they ever filmed a college flashback episode. “At least you’re dressed for mourning this time. I guess that will have to do.”
“I love you too, Mother.”
When it was time for me to “say my goodbyes”, I stood at the podium like everyone else had. I looked over the small crowd in front of me—some I’d known most of my life, others I’d never met. I was supposed to tell them what he meant to me. How he was the one who patched up my knee after I fell running with a jump rope when I was eight. How he accidentally knocked out one of my loose teeth when I was six and bought me ice cream every day for the next two weeks. How he would wake me up for school by walking into my room and tickling the bottom of my feet, then have coffee ready when I got to the kitchen. How he never bitched at me for drinking coffee in high school. How he knew he was sick and told me to live on the other side of the world anyway.
The silence stretched.
I heard a few coughs. Some sniffles. How could I explain to these people what losing him felt like? Eventually, when my mother was staring at me so intently that I could feel her killing me in her mind, I said the truth. “He was great.”
I stepped off the stage and handed the microphone to my brother. I listened as he told the stories I could only see in my head. The anecdotes of the Navy during World War II, driving us to school every day with 80s rock music playing on the radio—an odd choice for such a straight-laced, no bullshit kind of guy. The diagnosis: watching his mind fade to nothing one minute at a time. The frustration and kindness that were a daily tug-o-war.
That’s what I should have said, but yet again he did it right and I fucked it up.
Before the burial, naval officers folded a flag into a small, patterned triangle and handed it to my mother. The world swirled around me. I could barely make out his words: “On behalf of the President of the United States, the United States Navy, and a grateful nation, please accept this flag as a symbol of our appreciation of your loved one’s honorable and faithful service”. One sentence had never splintered me into so many pieces. Even though I knew they were coming, the sound of the gunshots during the salute still made me jump. Each one reminded me over and over again that he was gone.
My mom clutched the flag like an eagle with its prey. I wanted to hold it, to feel it beneath my fingers. Would it feel like holding his hand? Would it be warm like his eyes, comforting like his smile?
Guilt ate at my insides. Guilt from leaving my grandfather, leaving my mother, leaving my brother, leaving El, leaving Dublin. All I ever did was leave, usually without saying goodbye. I always just left mounds of destruction in my wake. The drive home was silent. Again.
“So, when’s your flight back?” My mom asked as soon as we walked in the front door that afternoon.
“What?”
“When are you leaving?” her voice was strained, tired.
“I don’t know yet. I thought you might want some help with everything. Bill cancellations, insurance policies, going through his stuff. I figured I’d stay a little while.”
She avoided my eyes as she went around the room, rearranging the papers on the kitchen table. Her mouth was pursed into a straight line, the tension radiating throughout the small space. “You have school. Your brother will take you to the bus station in the morning. Be packed and ready to go by eight.”
“Are you serious? Why?” I knew we weren’t on good terms, but this was drastic, even for her. “My professors will understand.”
“Now you’re worried about school. That’s fucking rich. You barely passed your classes in high school.” She laughed the way villains did in Disney movies. “You can just get right back to that island. You left us just like your shit head father, and we don’t need anyone who doesn’t want to be here.”
“I literally just told you that I do want to be here.” Her inflated ego never failed to surprise me—when I thought she had finally gotten over all of her bullshit, here she was ready to bring it all out again.
“No, you said help with insurance policies. That means you want the fucking money. So you can leave just as fast as you came. Go live your life over there, we don’t need you.”
“What money? It’s not like he had any. If he did, we would have seen it years ago. I was trying to do the right thing. I was trying to help. I want to help y’all. I want to help him.”
“Well, you can’t help him, Elizabeth, because he died. He died and you weren’t here. You just want to ease your own conscience.”
Her statement hit me like a fucking 18-wheeler. I couldn’t deny the truth of it, even though I wanted to. The guilt I felt was overwhelming. Every night for the past two years, it woke me up whispering in my ear about how bad of a person I am. About how he thought I didn’t love him because I never told him so. How my mother probably thinks the same thing, because whenever I say it, I’m being a sarcastic little shit. None of that comes close to my brother—how I hadn’t spoken to him since I left, not once. I left him with the mess that I refused to clean on my own.
“So I guess that’s it. Now that he’s dead, I don’t have any allies in this family?” I looked pointedly at my brother who was inching closer and closer to his bedroom door right off the kitchen. I wished my grandfather was able to stick up for me the way he had in the past—gotten my mother to understand her own bias. He was the one who would take her on, make her hear me out. I was alone.
“Don’t be like that, Liz,” my brother said in exasperation as if I was the one being unreasonable. “You know we’re all just trying our best.”
“Fine,” I said to both of them, walking into my bedroom to get the duffle bag I never unpacked. “But in a year, when you’re sitting in a therapist’s office spending $100 a week to have a stranger listen to your problems so they can fix you and your relationship with your children, I hope you remember this moment.” I walked back through the kitchen, looking back and forth between both of them. “I came here to help. I came to say I was sorry for his sake. But I’m not going to kill myself over it.”
“Just like your fucking father,” I heard my mother yell, even though I was already outside.
I was on the bus back to Charlotte by five, at the airport by dinner, sitting in the middle seat on a red-eye to Dublin by ten. I turned one phone off and the other one on—messages from El flooded my screen in waves. Apologies. Concern. Worry. Sorrow. Memes. Jokes. Pictures. Voice messages. Missed calls. In one message, El asked if I’d broken down yet. What did it mean that I still hadn’t? What if I never did?
Another too-big flag stared at me—this time on the back of the passenger sitting in front of me. Every time he stood up, the image sank further into my mind. Seven and a half hours (not including getting on or off the plane or baggage claim). Each star reminded me of the gunshots, each stripe a memory of him. The reds were still too red, the blues were still too blue.
When I got to baggage claim, El was at the bottom of the escalator, under the Irish flag. She didn’t ask me if I’d broken down again, or if I was doing okay, or even how the trip went. All she said was “welcome home”.
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Sara Gilbert is a third-year Ph.D. student in fiction at Oklahoma State University. She holds an MFA in Fiction from American College Dublin in Ireland, and an MA in English Literature from the University of Texas at San Antonio. Her writing has been featured in Wraparound South, New Plains Review, Cathexis Northwest Press, Havik Literary Magazine, Meat for Tea: The Valley Review, and the Santa Clara Review. Her work tends to focus on psychology, familial identity, and is based in places her own travels have taken her.