The beer in the back of the fridge

Five years today

There's a single beer that's stood sentry in the back of the fridge in our home for five years and two weeks. It's occupied those four square inches in two different houses and three refrigerators.

As the lone transfer when our last refrigerator died a few years ago - the beer moved straight into the new fridge and enjoyed a clean home for about a week before the kids spilled something sticky on the pristine shelves.

Sometimes I pull the beer out just to look at it. Inside, the amber liquid still sloshes around. I wonder if it's any good at this point. Probably not. Not that I'll drink it, I don't think I ever could. That beer is for one person, and he's not coming back for it.

So, the beer stands there as leftovers and sandwiches, cheeses, and half-eaten jars of pickles crowd around it and then are pulled back out. It's seen baby food jars, then toddler snacks, trays for holiday parties, side dishes for five Thanksgivings, and 20 birthday cakes.

That beer sat in the back of the fridge as the jugs of store-bought milk turned into glass mason jars of goat milk. It's presided over the move from egg cartons full of perfectly uniform white eggs to the sometimes misshapen and magically inconsistent jewel tones from our motley flock of chickens.

The beer still stands there as an anchor to a life and a person who is gone. A physical reminder of how quickly things change - even those that seem constant - like the bottle holding its space in the back of the fridge.

Five years ago today, I found my Dad's body. It was the worst moment of my life - so far.

Five years and two weeks ago, my Dad, Jim, who would ask, "What can I bring?" when he came for dinner several times a week, put a six-pack of beers in our fridge. I would tell him, "Nothing, just yourself and whatever you want to drink."

Dad would drink one beer at dinner, several times a week, while remarking that no matter what my husband cooked, it was "The best thing he's ever eaten. Phenomenal."

The Saturday before Easter five years ago - Holy Saturday for Catholics - my Dad came over for dinner, like usual. He said he wasn't feeling well, so he skipped the last beer from that six-pack. Dad uncharacteristically ate very little. We were worried, but he assured us he'd made a doctor's appointment later in the week. It was probably a cold he gotten on the plane from his trip a few weeks earlier to visit family in Arizona.

Easter morning, my Dad called. He was supposed to go with us to our sister-in-law's house for brunch. He'd bought sparkling wines to bring, including a bottle of Gruet (a New Mexican sparkling that I love - trust me, it's better than it sounds) for us. But he said he still wasn't feeling great and just needed to sleep. "No worries Daddy," I told him. "Let me know what the doctor says. Just rest up, and we'll see you later in the week. I love you." I'm so grateful we never ended a phone call without saying, "I love you."

That week, post-Easter, five years ago, was one of the most hectic I can remember. One of my dearest friends, Lou, had a funeral for his Dad. In my work, we posted a fairly major political project, and I was on television doing commentary about it. There was a seemingly important fight within my friend group of girlfriends (in retrospect, it was not at all important). I had to juggle childcare for my 9-month-old son, and that Friday, we were scheduled to do a double closing on our old house and the new place on a bit of acreage.

The house negotiations had gotten uncommonly adversarial. So much so that the previous homeowner had thrust upon us a color we didn't want for the new roof and told the realtor it was because she was upset we renamed the cat she'd abandoned on the property to starve for the previous six months from "Mittens" to "Johnny Cash." We still look at the roof and call it the "yellow spite roof." It got nasty.

But, after that Easter, we were supposed to be in the home stretch. It just was a matter of logistics, putting our heads down, and powering through all the competing needs. It would be fine.

It was one of those weeks where you sprint and pray. As soon as the baby would nap, I'd be packing closets and dressers, wondering how so much money had morphed into so much clutter.

My Dad, who wasn't feeling great, was probably sleeping off his cold. He had a doctor's appointment, they'd give him some antibiotics, and then he could sit and watch the baby while we moved the following weekend.

I didn't notice that the man who usually called me four or five times a day wasn't calling. I talked to him religiously at least twice daily, on my way to work and back, but my schedule was off with the impending move and appointments. There was so much going on, and I missed it.

At any other time, I would have noticed there was no debrief from the doctor's appointment or that we hadn't connected. In the following weeks, when I finally mustered the courage to check his voicemail, I heard my unworried voice, as if from another person, leaving messages, "Hi. It's me. Just checking in, hope you're feeling better. Love you."

By Thursday the 5th, I was still knocking to-dos off the list to close and move. I went into the appliance store to pay the balance on the refrigerator we had ordered for the new house, the same one that would later hold that lone beer.

My Mom called from Tucson as I was paying, "Have you heard from your father?" Although my parents had separated years before and lived in different states, they still checked in with one another. My stomach dropped. I hadn't heard from Dad. I . . . oh . . .

I quickly hung up with my Mom and started to drive downtown to my Dad's apartment, frantically calling him and then the building management office, asking them to check on him.

It was fortunate that I had lived in those apartments for a decade before I got married and moved in with my husband. So, I had a relationship with the building management. Kitty-corner from the Capitol Building in Denver, that apartment was the perfect place for a young, 20-something politico to walk to work and be in the middle of the action.

A few years after I moved in, my Dad followed. He lived a few floors below me. We were only an elevator ride away from one another, but each had our own distinctive space. We could still get delivery sushi regularly, and boy, did we. We ordered so much sushi that they started giving us a free cheesecake with every order, which Dad insisted he eat with chopsticks.

Once I left that building, Dad stayed. He loved the neighborhood and walked across the street each morning to the Spring Cafe, where he would eat a muffin, drink a latte, and check emails.

During the drive downtown, I got a call back from the building manager, Venetia. "We knocked, but no one answered," she said. We were friends; she heard the panic in my voice. "I'll be there as soon as possible," I told her. "I have the spare key."

A little over a year before, my Dad had slipped in the shower and fallen in the tub. He was there for over 48 hours before my brother found him. After days in the hospital, he moved into our guest room for a month to recover. I was pregnant at the time, and it was hard on him and us. On the drive downtown again, I kept thinking this was that fall redux.

When I got to the building, Venetia met me, and we rode up the elevator together in silence. The air was so heavy it felt like it had solidified into Jello. We opened his door, and his apartment felt empty. "Thank GOD," I thought, "he's not here." I was mostly right; he wasn't there anymore.

As I walked around the corner, calling for him anyway, I saw his feet on the floor, peeking out from the other side of his sitting chair. I screamed and crumbled to the ground, managing only to send my husband a single text message, "Dad's dead," before dialing 9-1-1, shutting my phone off to all incoming and outgoing calls and messages.

I was instantly transported into a nightmare.

The next thing I remember was the scratchy feel of the commercial carpet in the hallway in front of his door on my cheek.

Paramedics came, declaring the obvious, and then the cops were next. I called my Uncle John, my Dad's brother, and told him the horrible news while I continued to rock myself like a child in the fetal position on that floor. As the policeman started his report and came to interview me, he asked, "Do you know anyone in the area who can come be with you? If not, we can call a Victim Advocate."

It struck me. I was within a block of the Capitol, and it was a Thursday afternoon in the middle of the legislative session. I didn't just know someone in the area; I knew hundreds of people within a mile of where I crumbled onto that little patch of scratchy commercial carpet.

I had friends and allies, political adversaries, ex-boyfriends, acquaintances, people I'd worked for and who'd worked for me, less than a football field from where I was - and I did not want one of them. In a political world where trust is currency, who did I want to see me in my worst moment - the one where I was vomiting from grief and shock?

If there's a way to discern who your real friends are, think about who you would text to scrape you off the floor when reduced to nothing more than a puddle of grief. Who would come for you with no reservation?

One of my friends in real life, D, a Democrat (I'm a Republican), came over. He squeezed me tight as they wheeled my Dad, draped with a white sheet, down the hall. He left his car at the Capitol and drove mine to our house. D sat at the table with me and my husband and an oblivious baby as I gulped wine and worked on the last of the paperwork for the house closing the next day.

He held me up, literally and figuratively. Since that day - my worst - D has never mentioned it to anyone, never used it as a chit, and never expected or wanted anything in return. I will never be able to repay him for that day. He was everything I needed at that moment.

The next day my husband and I closed on both houses. In the coming days, we got a cause of death: a pulmonary embolism - a clot that went to his lungs. It was a fast death, according to doctors.

I had so many questions and regrets. Was Dad scared? Did he know what was happening? What was he thinking? Did he know how much I loved him?

I took solace in how his body was faced when he fell; the last thing he saw was a picture of the baby, his grandson, in a frame on the buffet. He loved that baby, and the baby loved him.

The following days and weeks were a blur of the cold logistics of moving and death, motherhood, family, and utter heartbreak.

When the medical examiner called me to tell me how Dad had died, I had one big question for her: "If he had made it to the doctor, would he still be alive?" Her answer gave me no peace - "Possibly. If caught in time, Doctors can treat pulmonary embolisms." I thanked her and called one of my best girlfriends, screaming like a wounded animal. All she could reply was, "Fuck."

I spent years wishing that week I had paid better attention or had just scheduled to take him to the doctor myself. One of the biggest regrets of my life is that my Dad - my Daddy - died alone. I should have been holding his hand.

Friends and family rallied around, and some of the most beautiful moments came from that time. I also had some of the darkest times from those weeks. I thought I would never sleep again and felt that I would barely survive from coffee to wine time.

Slowly, I emerged from the fog of grief forever changed. I tell people I love them faster and easier; I give the benefit of the doubt to those, especially political adversaries, to whom I used to attribute malice. Things look grayer than the sharp black and white I used to see. Mostly, I look for beauty everywhere.

My Dad was an art collector. He left behind some stunning and technically masterful pieces but also had an eye for seeing art in the unexpected. Once he found an old window someone had painted and left behind a dumpster, brought it home, and hung it up.

He loved food. I remember how much my Dad loved the first ripe homegrown tomatoes of the season - first from the various backyards of my childhood, then from the patio garden I had at the apartment. He was an enthusiastic, voracious, and adventurous eater. I'm so sad that it wasn't until years after his death I made my first batch of goat cheese.

Most of all, my Dad loved his family. He loved us and made sure each of us knew it. I hope my family will look back on my time here and feel about me the way I do about Dad.

He never got to meet his second grandson, my younger son. But, the other day, I brought home half a bone-in ribeye from a restaurant. The baby took one look at it and stole it. I texted my brother the picture of his ecstasy, chewing on a quality steak. He texted back, "That's Dad. I have known that face my whole life."

A sharp acute pain comes with a sudden and unexpected death. In the years since, though, when I imagine what it would be like if he'd lived that week, I think of what our lives would be now. Would he still be alive today? Would his health have continued to deteriorate? In many ways, his death was harder on us - we weren't ready - but spared him the slow decline.

We'd started the conversations about assisted living in the months prior, and Dad kept insisting that he wasn't ready yet. He liked his apartment, being downtown, going to Spring Cafe, coming up for dinners, and seeing the baby.

I have tried over the years to figure out how to write this story, and I have always worried I couldn't do it justice. I still can't do it justice. But here I write, flailing forward to find the words.

In these last five years, I've tried on every style of grief - from disbelief, to leaning in and letting it overtake me like a wave, to total denial. I've self-loathed that no matter how much time goes by, I "am not normal yet." I also spend days wondering how to go on, then wandering out into the sun and the dirt and thanking God for every additional breath and moment and tiny miracle.

There's a comfort in mourning, like slipping into a bed with clean sheets right after a shower. I can anticipate how it feels, that tightening of my throat. It's almost a feeling of relief, knowing that sadness and loss reside right under the surface, where they always sit, and I can push it like a bruise. The pain has morphed from a stabbing pain into a dull ache, but it's always there.

I can pull up the file: "Voicemails from Dad" on my computer and hear that familiar, "Hey, Darling. Just checking in. Love you." I can look at the art on the wall or in my son's face while he loves and eats (but I repeat myself) and feel it all over again.

It's been five years, but if I can still hurt, it means the love was real, just like that chilled beer in the back of the fridge.