Grief

Happy Birthday, Dead Wife

/ Daddy

Dear Vanessa,

I left Facebook six years ago. I didn’t miss it. I didn’t think about it.

Then I needed to sell a book.

So I reactivated the account. You know what’s funny? I totally forgot you had Facebook. Isn’t that funny? Hilarious.

I should be making friends with new people and joining Facebook groups to promote the book, or spam posting the link to the Amazon page. Instead I open the app and start doom scrolling like a normal person who is definitely not having a grief-flavored midlife marketing crisis.

The first thing I saw was your wall.

People are still wishing you a happy birthday.

Most of them know. They write “thinking of you” and “miss you” with the little cake emoji that Facebook auto-suggests. It’s a weird genre. Half greeting, half memorial. The cake emoji really doesn’t help.

But some of them. I’m not sure.

I think there are people on your friends list who don’t know you’re dead.

Facebook drops your birthday into the notifications bar. Someone clicks it because they always click it. They type “Happy Birthday!!” with three exclamation points and the cake and never scroll. Never see the other comments. Never put together that everyone else is talking about a person who isn’t there anymore.

I’ve done this. Not to you. To other people. You probably have too. You scroll the birthday list, you type the message, you close the tab. You can do the whole thing without ever actually thinking about the person whose birthday it is.

Which is the whole trick of it. The platform is built so you can perform connection without having any. The notification system is a friendship simulator.

You loved birthdays.

You were the person who actually remembered. You’d text the day before. Plan something stupid and elaborate. Pick out a card that took twenty minutes to choose. You were not a Happy Birthday!! Plus Stupid Emoji person. You were a Pick The Perfect Card person.

Now you’re a notification.

I scrolled through your wall for a while. Some of the messages were beautiful. Most were autopilot. A few were from people whose names I didn’t recognize. I wondered which ones know that you’re dead. I wondered if any of them, somewhere out there, are typing the message and going about their day and have no idea.

It’s another museum of yours that I didn’t agree to curate. Same as the house used to be. Except this one has comments.

I wondered if I should leave one.

LOL. You know I didn’t. That’s so weird to even consider.

It feels like an out-of-body thing. Watching strangers post into the void. The platform doesn’t know you’re dead. The platform doesn’t know anything. It just keeps the lights on.

Happy birthday, Vanessa.

I typed that and felt weird about it. I’m doing the same thing they are. Performing for an algorithm. Talking to nobody.

Except it’s me. So at least the algorithm is getting one honest message in the pile.

Besitos,

Michael

I’m Your Plus One

/ Daddy

Dear Luciana,

I just got back from your first party where I was invited by people who never met your mommy.

Everyone I know knew her. Other than the host, these people don’t even know you don’t have a mommy.

I thought that would feel like freedom. Walking in clean. No one was looking at me with the head tilt. The SORRY FOR YOUR LOSS face. The flinch.

It didn’t feel like freedom. I still stuck out. Badly.

Turns out you carry it in even when nobody knows. It’s not the head tilts that mark you. It’s something underneath. The way I stood near the wall. The way I counted exits. The way I held a drink I didn’t want so my hands had a job.

I do this because I have to.

People will pretend I have a choice.

Mommy knew every name in every room she walked into. She was the people person. I don’t want you to turn into me. If I’m going to turn you into a mini mommy instead, I have to start now. No pressure.

The parties. The play-dates. The small talk. All of it makes me want to walk into the ocean.

I’m exaggerating. It’s not like this was a one-on-one play-date.

You had a blast. You really did. You found the one good corner with the good toys and you OWNED it. Total joy. And you played by yourself the entire time. Happily. Completely. Not lonely. Just solo.

You’re fine alone. You’re a kid who can make a cardboard box a whole civilization.

I’m dragging us both to these things and calling it “for Luciana,” and the honest version is: Daddy needs human interaction or Daddy starts talking to the dishwasher. The problem is that Daddy would much rather talk to the dishwasher. It doesn’t talk back.

I tell people I’m bringing my daughter to a thing. The truth is you’re bringing me. You’re the reason I’m allowed to be there. The cute, verbal little permission slip in tiny shoes.

But it’s still a very lonely existence. Just in public. I scanned that whole party. Forty adults, maybe. Couples. Couples. A cluster of couples. Two parents per kid, everywhere I looked. Tag-teaming the snack table. Doing the eyebrow thing across the room that married people do.

Not one single parent in the building. Not one.

I’m not even mad about it. It’s just math. Two-parent households throw the parties. The single dad is the thing they talk about gently in the car on the way home.

So I worked the room as your plus one. I learned three new names I will forget by Tuesday. I said “oh she’s two, she’s so busy” maybe nine times. I watched you not need me for forty-five straight minutes and felt the specific ache of being SO PROUD and SO USELESS at the same time.

That’s the deal now. You thrive. I lurk near the snacks for emotional support. We call it a family outing.

One day the room won’t feel like that.

One day I’ll learn a name and remember it.

And you should grow up knowing your daddy showed up. Even when he was the only one standing slightly wrong by the wall.

You did great today. Thanks for getting me in the door.

Now stop throwing a fit because I just put you down for a nap. I swear your scream could be used as a dog whistle.

Besitos, 

Daddy

Feeding the Algorithm Your Daughter

/ Daddy

Dear Vanessa,

I posted a video of Luciana kissing your gravestone.

I’m not sorry. Who cares. You’re dead. It got engagement. People bought the book.

Long form doesn’t move on Instagram. I’ve tried. Nobody wants what I have to say.

What moves is cute clips of Luciana with dead mommy.

I’m not doing it anymore… probably. I might change my mind tomorrow.

I don’t hate it out of shame. Fuck those people who would judge me. I find it emotionally exhausting. Marketing for the book on Instagram is about the same amount of fun as getting a root canal.

Yes, I remember how awful getting a root canal was for you.

Adding Luciana to the mix is torture.

I’d rather write to you. On a website almost nobody reads. That feels less intrusive. Instead of groveling for likes, I’d rather bother you.

I wish the likes did something for me. I wish “she’s so precious” did something for me. They don’t. There’s nothing wrong with it. You ran an Instagram for Lola and Nala. Thousands of followers. You ate it up.

I wish I liked it.

I don’t.

So I’m stuck. Write here and hope people eventually read my ramblings that are being sent into a void, or keep feeding the algorithm your daughter.

The third option is just let the book die.

Bad choice of words.

Maybe I should stop. The book already accomplished what I initially wanted. Something for Luciana when she is older.

What would you do if you were alive and I was dead?

I already know.

You’d post every cute clip imaginable.

But other than the fact that I don’t want to do it. I’m also very lazy.

I bet I’d get more views if you uploaded a video.

Think about it and get back to me.

Besitos,

Michael

My Favorite Line In The Book

/ Daddy

The following contains spoilers from the book.

Dear Reader,

My favorite line in the book is actually the last line in the book. This is actually a spoiler. Which is also weird to say about a grief memoir. My wife isn’t coming back from the dead. She isn’t a vampire. But the last line is really the emotional coda of the entire book, so if you care about that sort of thing, don’t read ahead.

The first letter I write to Luciana is about a panic attack after I forget her Mommy’s favorite flower. I do end up remembering it, and I write:

Your Mommy’s favorite flower was pink peonies.

Yay, I finally remembered, now what do I win? Existential dread.

The last letter in the entire book is a letter to Luciana when she is fifteen years old, in the future.

The last line in the entire book is:

Mommy’s favorite flower is pink peonies. I remembered.

With only a minor hint of existential dread.

The grammar is on purpose. When I first lost Vanessa, I talked about her in the past tense. But her favorite flower will always be pink peonies, no matter how long she has been gone.

Also, if you look at the cover of the book, there is a pink peony on both the front and the back cover. For that exact reason.

Besitos,

Michael

Living in a Mausoleum

/ Daddy

Dear Luciana,

I lived in that house for twelve years. I met Mommy right before I moved in, so by the time she died, every room was hers. The furniture she picked, the paint colors she argued for, the random Target finds she swore we needed. The whole place was a museum I never agreed to curate. I wanted out almost immediately. Every corner was a trigger. Walking past the kitchen felt like visiting a grave. But wanting to leave meant admitting I couldn’t handle being surrounded by her anymore, which felt like the first step toward forgetting her.

Except you can’t just leave a dead person’s house. You have to go through it. Every drawer, every shelf, every closet she stuffed with things I didn’t know we owned. Each item is a tiny decision: keep, donate, trash. And every single one feels like a betrayal no matter which pile it lands in. Throwing out her old magazines feels like throwing out a piece of her. Keeping a broken picture frame because she bought it feels insane. There’s no system for this. There’s no right answer. You just stand there holding a red candle from HomeGoods and wonder if this is the one that matters.

The cheapest, dumbest looking thing in the house. It lived in the back of the closet for years. I used it when I asked your mommy to marry me, during Covid, when I couldn’t take her anywhere. I lit it on the dining room table, got down on one knee in our apartment, and she said yes.

I kept it for a specific reason. Your mom had opinions about home decor. Strong ones. Most of the stuff I picked out, she very politely tolerated… by saying no.

I’d buy a lamp and three weeks later there would be a new lamp. She was sneaky.

But the candle, she liked. One of the only things I picked on my own that she legitimately thought looked good.

I threw it out.

I picked it up, held it for a second, thought, this is from when I proposed. Thought, she liked this one. Thought, the wick is barely used. Then I dropped it in the trash bag.

I don’t even know why.

The candle had more meaning than half the stuff I’m keeping. The candle that contains the actual moment I asked her to be my wife. In the bag. Tied off. Out to the curb. If I didn’t need it for years, why do I need it now that she is dead?

Should I have kept it. Should I keep everything?

The guilt is the part nobody warns you about. Not the packing, not the sorting, not the logistics. The guilt of wanting to leave the place where your life together happened. Like the house itself is watching you walk out. I needed to go because staying was killing me slowly, but going felt like I was the one doing the leaving this time. She didn’t get a choice. Now I’m making one for both of us, and I hate it.

Besitos,

Daddy

The Night I Didn’t Care If You Cried

/ Daddy

Excerpt from I’m Only a Good Daddy Because Your Mommy Died

Dear Luciana,

Every night when Mommy and I went to sleep, I would turn on a fan and have it blast in my face while she slept under a pile of blankets. I’m never cold. In fact, Mommy always called me her personal heater. The night after Mommy died, I had never been so cold in my entire life. I buried myself under a mountain of blankets that felt like they weighed a thousand pounds, my teeth chattering so hard I thought they’d crack. One wrapped around each leg. Rocking back and forth. My body hanging half off the bed.

But that was only temporary. Every few minutes I would flip the pillow to the cool side, but there was no cool side left. I was sweating through the pillowcase, soaking through three different t-shirts. I put on the ceiling fan and the stand-up fan. Both blasted arctic air while my body burned like I didn’t even have skin.

I was surrounded by the entire world, suffocating in my room. Friends downstairs, family inside the hallway. Everyone on top of me, and I never felt so far away from a living soul.

My brother slept in my room that night, and a lot of the following nights. My siblings would switch off. Everyone made sure I was sleeping okay. I wasn’t. They made sure I ate. I didn’t.

The heat was from the rage of never seeing Mommy again; the cold was from the isolation I knew would be my life going forward. They took turns pummeling me into nothing. That spiral would continue, never as intense as that first night.

I slept in our bed, surrounded by her absence. The indent where Mommy should have been still held the shape of her body. Her nightstand with her Bible still open to the day before she died. It was one of those Bibles that had a prayer for every day of the year. Its thin pages had her fingerprints still on them. I couldn’t look at it. I couldn’t close it. The book stayed unmoved for weeks.

My phone pinged every few minutes.

Delete.

Delete.

Delete.

I put it on vibrate. I couldn’t handle whatever people thought they should say to make this better.

Bzzz.

Bzzz.

Bzzz.

The phone was getting dangerously close to being thrown into the toilet. I put it on silent and left it that way.

Time had no meaning. Hours went by, and the clock next to my bed would lie to me.

8:01.

8:14.

8:16.

7:52.

I slept and moved around, and talked and existed. But there was no order to it. It was just a blob of out-of-body existence. I was never there. I wasn’t with Mommy, either, in case you were wondering. I was alone.

I will always be alone.

Did I say anything to you that night? Did I notice if you were crying in your crib while I stared at ceiling fans? Did I even care?

At my darkest moment, was I strong and thinking of you and your needs?

No.

All that mattered was the next breath. Not for me, I didn’t care about me. I was staying alive for everyone watching. Your abuelos had lost their only child. My family circled me like worried guards. People were checking on me every hour. At that time, I didn’t want to survive. Not for me, or even, and this destroys me to write, for you.

I don’t know who I will be as a daddy when you read this. Will I be a good daddy? Did we get through the tough times? It didn’t start out that way. When you needed me the most. I was a black hole. But somewhere in the wreckage of my brain, there was a tiny smidgen of a glimmer that I needed to be healthy for you. I wasn’t. I didn’t. I couldn’t. I knew I needed to be.

Who checked on you that night? Who fed you when you were hungry? Who held you close when you needed attention? I don’t remember. But someone must have. The house overflowed with people making sure you stayed alive. You were somewhere in that house, nine months old, needing everything.

Everyone switched shifts, watching me evaporate while you played, while you cried, while you ate.

The house was never quiet. I became the center of the universe at the exact time I wanted the opposite. Someone was always awake, lurking in the hallway. Someone was always making sure the fridge was full. I had never had so much food in my house, none of which I could force down my throat. All of these loving people became my minimum-security prison.

That first night I was jealous of Mommy. If you had told me I could switch places with her, I would have agreed instantly. I would have done anything to feel nothing.

The ten-minute intervals of sleep were little help. At least during the nightmares my body stopped burning. Waking up meant the burning, and Mommy still being dead.

That first night wasn’t about being your daddy. It wasn’t about grief or loss or any of the words people use to make death sound manageable. It was about my body rejecting a world where Mommy didn’t exist. While everyone was making sure I didn’t follow her wherever she’d gone.

The next day, I would have to pretend to be human. That night, I just had to not disappear completely.

Besitos, 

Daddy