I Hurt Once, but I Can Still Hurt Again

Hey all. This is another one I wrote for school. College this time. My professor said very nice things about it. Also, let's all agree right now not to talk about the questionable legalities of using a Night Court screenshot in the thumbnail, deal?

I'd also just like to mention that I'm pretty sure I'm gonna give my website another makeover. Make it a little less formal, especially since the whole transactions bit isn't up-and-running yet. I won't do the whole song-and-dance I set up for this post, since I'm probably gonna do away with it anyway. (I know. I know. Sue me.)

Anyway, now for the content you actually came for. Enjoy.

CONTENT WARNING: Death (including death of a family member) and somewhat vivid descriptions of a corpse

When I got my wisdom teeth out, I told all my friends not to worry about me. I had been through much worse pain before, namely, abdominal cramps that would kill a horse. When I came home after the surgery, I was screaming in a pain-fueled rage. It wasn’t any worse than my cramps. It was just a different part of my body that was hurting.

I started watching a show with my mom that she used to watch in college: a sitcom called Night Court. Around the time I started to feel like a true fan of the show, I made the mistake of Googling the cast. I guess something about the episode I was watching prompted a question about Charlie Robinson, so I opened a web browser and looked him up. I felt a pit in my stomach when I typed in his name and saw the past tense format of his Wikipedia page. He had died in July of 2021.

I usually tell people that every mention of death sends me to relive the death of my father in tenuous detail, and therefore, I avoid the thought like the plague. This is a total lie. Not only do I talk about it a lot, but the many years between now and then have left nothing but a dimly lit flash in my mind, unless I call it to the forefront. Besides, after my Google search, I wasn’t too concerned with that memory. My focus was on wondering if Charlie was the only one.

Sitting up slightly, I scrolled to look at the related searches. Like a coward, I started with John Larroquette, who I already knew was alive. I hesitated, but my curiosity won out as I scrolled again, clicking on Markie Post this time. Her death was August of 2021. Call me a glutton for punishment, I kept checking actors’ Wikipedia pages. Eventually, I clicked on Harry Anderson. April 16, 2018. Two days before April 18, 2018…my dad’s very last birthday.

I don’t remember it at all. I don’t think I even got him anything. Just like all my other memories of my dad, his final birthday was lost, maybe gone forever. When I made that Google search, I was sitting in the very same room where I found my dad, in the very same spot that I sat… waiting for him to wake up.

It was Tuesday, September 18. I woke up late, which was unusual. My dad usually woke me up, and I knew he was home because my mom was out of town. Instead of worrying, though, I got all my stuff together and rushed downstairs. When I got down there, I realized why he hadn’t come to wake me up. I thought he was asleep, so I sat in the loveseat on the other side of the room. He’d been a little crankier than normal that past year, so I didn’t want to wake him up and make him mad. Soon, I noticed how still he was. Something told me that we weren’t going to spend that afternoon looking for rocks at the river like we planned.

The thing about my dad is that even though he was my father, he was also my best friend. I didn’t go out with my friends as much as the other kids, but when my dad picked me up from school, I could always count on an adventure. It was silly, really, because it was usually something as small as getting McDonald’s milkshakes or taking me to whatever house he was working on the roof of. When he died, my days felt emptier.

Contrarily, it didn’t directly affect my life at all that Harry Anderson was dead. I had no idea who he was when he was alive, and even if I had, meeting him probably wouldn’t have been in the cards anyway. When I first found out how much of the Night Court cast was dead, I didn’t think it would bother me. It made watching the show slightly off-putting, but it was nothing I hadn’t dealt with before. I’d seen plenty of my favorite actors die, and obviously…

“My dad’s not breathing, and he looks pale,” I told the operator. My older sister helped me move him to the floor. I knew CPR. My sister didn’t. I didn’t feel like teaching her in that moment. So, I did it. His dead organs squished as I started compressions. Mouth-to-mouth smelled like moldy cheese. My dad was always pale. His corpse was paler.

The paramedics arrived and the police took me and my sister around the corner to the bottom of the staircase. They had me call my grandma. While she was on her way, I called my mom. I told her what happened. Then we waited.

Now that my job was done, I had time to process everything. Deep down, I knew my dad was dead, but even deeper than that, I still had hope. I kept expecting him to walk around the corner, maybe say something, maybe not, I hadn’t thought that far ahead, and I guess I was still too dazed to realize that even if he was alive, he probably wouldn’t have walked around the corner. My head was spinning.

Not long after I found out about Harry Anderson, I had a similar spiral. I had so many questions that I wanted to ask him. I went back to Google and looked for as many articles about him as I could find. Dies. Dies. Dead. Dead at 65. Remembering. Dies. It wasn’t the nicest reminder, and I didn’t really get an answer to any of my questions.

I quit my research after a while. I didn’t understand why I was so upset. I had been through much worse, so why did this hurt so bad? Of course, it wasn’t any worse than the pain of my dad’s death. It was just a different part of my heart that was breaking.