by Lauren Earline Leonard

EXCERPT //

My dad died several years ago—temporarily—in the yard in front of the yellow ranch house my brothers and I grew up in and still call home. It was Thanksgiving weekend, the traditional start of exterior illumination season.

I remember the day being sunny and moderately cold, though it would not have been windy, because, as everyone knows, you can’t properly string lights on an enormous conifer with winds above a certain speed. Over the years, to keep up with the tree’s growth, Dad had devised an unholy means of decoration: The feat involves at least one extension cord, a ladder, many more strings of lights than should be connected end-to-end, and, most importantly, the pole of the pool vacuum rigged with duct tape to hold a U-shaped wire clothes hanger at the suction end. This is the end that allows for precision installation at the tree’s uppermost limbs. It is also the end that came in contact with an overhead power line, sending my dad to the ground and rendering him unconscious.

Heeding the blood curdling screams of my (adult) brother and I, my mom responded first with the speed and efficiency only a mother and registered nurse could. She beat on his chest for what seemed like an eternity, threatening all the while to kill him if he died on her. Dad came to and, after a trip to the emergency room, was cleared and sent home with a series of follow-up cardiology appointments and suggestions to find less Griswoldian ways to celebrate the season.

I have more faith in my dad than perhaps any other thing. I trust him implicitly; he is my hero. A lifelong practicing Catholic, my dad has faith in God. This faith is hard for me to reconcile with the man I know to be fiercely intelligent and logical; the man I go to for advice and answers to anything and everything. It’s mostly hard to believe because Dad, upon meeting his demise in the yard, did not meet God. He heard no baritone voice guiding him toward a bright light. There was no welcoming, cherubic sentry stationed at an exquisitely built pair of pearly gates. He remembers hanging lights one minute and my mom asking him to state his name, the day, and the date the next. Between these memories, nothing. Dad returned from the great beyond with nothing of note to report.

I had my first panic attack a few days after the electrocution. //

For full text and images, consider reading RQ in print, on a Sunday afternoon, sun streaming through your window, coffee in hand, and nary a phone alert within sight or in earshot… just fine words, fine design, and the opportunity to make a stitch in time. // Subscribe or buy a single issue today. // Print is dead. Long live print. //

Switchbacks // 'Father, Son & Holy Ghost'