a chocolate croissant and an earl grey with almond milk

One thing that I will always remember about the morning my dad was killed is that I was eating a chocolate croissant, and drinking an earl grey with almond milk when I found out. Before his death, for the six months or so that I worked at Pratt while my dad was alive, that was my special treat. I used to go to the little cafe across the street and get those once or twice a week, if I was feeling down, or low in energy, around 10:30 in the morning. I was so excited to be earning a salary (38k a year felt like a lot of money after spending six months underemployed and making sandwiches) that I was able to let myself buy my special morning treat sometimes, even if I couldn’t let myself buy lunch.

When my mom called to tell me that my dad had been killed I had just gotten my tea and croissant and taken them upstairs to scan invoices, because it was a Monday. At Pratt, I paid invoices on Mondays, it was one of the first things I learned. On Monday, you invoiced. On Tuesday and Thursday you placed orders, and on Wednesday and Friday you made order records. It was like that.

When I got the call from my mom I took my tea and croissant with me outside, and something seemed wrong, so I thought, ((maybe I hoped,) sorry grandma) that the call was to say that my grandmother was in the hospital or something. When I saw Noah coming up the stairs to the porch of the library, I knew it was not about her. I put my croissant and tea down on the bench beside me.

I don’t remember what happened to my croissant and tea. I remember going back to the basement, and putting my invoices on my desk, and being sure to log out of my computer and turn off my monitor, because I knew my boss would scold me for leaving on my monitor (in retrospect, he would not have.) I remember Noah telling me to just leave it, I didn’t need to turn off my monitor, because my dad was dead. What did I do with my croissant and tea?

I remember going to see my boss and telling him I had to go, that my dad was dead. I was sobbing. He saw me with Noah and said “Are you going to introduce me to your twin?” and I said “My dad just died, I’m leaving.” and John said “sorry” which was pretty uncommon for him, and told me he’d record that I worked the whole day, so I could come back on Tuesday of the next week. (I’ve since realized, negotiating contracts as a shop steward and looking at other jobs, five days for when your dad dies is shockingly good. Can you believe that? Isn’t that insane? Unionize your workplace.) What did I do with that tea? Did I leave it on my desk? Did it stay outside, on the bench right by the library door, the bench that I never sat on again? Did someone on the facilities staff have to pick it up and throw it away?

I think I took my croissant home with me. Noah asked if I wanted to get a car home, and I said I wanted to walk. It took a long time, because I kept getting scared at the corners, and crying when I saw cars. I think I took my croissant home and dropped in on the table. I had this idea that I would eat it later, that later, it would make me happy.

How could I eat this croissant? I had some idea that eating it killed my dad, or, rather, that if I ate it I would find out, again, somehow, that he was dead. I never finished it, I know that. What did I do with it? Did my baffled roommate have to throw it away after I left suddenly? Did Noah throw it out? How long did it sit there, taking the blame for a coincidence of timing?

Noah said that I needed to eat, so we got Thai food, and we threw that out too. I couldn’t eat. All I could do was cry, answer the phone and cry for a few minutes on the phone before giving it to Noah, or saying goodbye, and then going to the bathroom. Nobody warned me that learning my dad had been killed would give me diarrhea on top of everything else. Life is so unfair.

I remember thinking, after I returned to work, one week later, and was confronted by the invoices that I had left on my desk the morning my dad was murdered, that I couldn’t eat my special treat again, that maybe I would never be able to eat a chocolate croissant for the rest of my life. I cried when I opened the USB that had the invoices I had scanned, and I saw the date 11-28-2016. When I processed invoices and had to enter the due date 11-28-2016, I would huddle under my desk and sob as silently as I could, and all of my coworkers pretended not to notice. When, a few weeks later, I opened a box and saw an invoice date from the day he was killed, and then I had to enter that, I went into the back of the bound periodicals section and walked around crying and making sure that no one else was there. It was right before finals, and there were students everywhere. There aren’t a lot of places to cry discreetly in a library during finals, but I think I found all of them. It would have been great to get a treat, but I couldn’t, I honestly couldn’t consider eating a chocolate croissant for a long time.

I don’t remember when I forgave chocolate croissants. At some point, I was able to eat them again, but not with tea. After a while I could even go to the cafe and get a plain croissant and earl grey tea at 10:30. I started adding a lot of sugar to my tea, because that would make me feel less like I should die. I didn’t get a chocolate croissant with my tea though, that was too much. Then, in the winter of 2018, the cafe shut down suddenly. I was out for a month on medical leave, recovering from top surgery, and when I came back to work, in the spring of 2019, it was gone. I never got a chance to forgive that food entirely, and I might still not be ready to. I started bringing my own tea to the office, and since the cafe closed I don’t know if I’ve even had a mighty leaf earl grey, and now the chance to “get over” this weird aftereffect of his killing has passed me by.

I’m eating a chocolate croissant right now though, well, a chocolate and hazelnut croissant actually, I still prefer other kinds of croissants, but I have had some really great chocolate croissants since he was killed, even if they are no longer my favorite. In six years, I have gotten over a lot of things. I think it’s been over a year since I cried because of my dad being dead, but in all this time, I haven’t forgiven the chocolate croissant and earl grey with almond milk.

I know that I manage to make almost every food about my dead dad one way or another, maybe it’s a bit cliche for me at this point, but for me food is the most direct way I have to remember. I don’t have a visual memory, I can’t, actually, picture my dad in my mind, and I can’t remember his voice. In the six years since he was killed, my fears have, in many ways, come true. I have forgotten, but when I cook, when I eat, even when I think about food, I remember a part of him that I haven’t had to lose yet. There is a small part of my dad that lives on in me, beyond the genetics, beyond the name that I carry on, beyond, even, the hairline, receding in the exact same way. All of those ways are real, but they aren’t choices. When I choose to say hello to my dad, to give him an offering, that is always a bit sacred to me.

Every year on the anniversary of his death, I cook for him. I offer my dad dishes that he liked when he was alive. It’s very static, I make the recipe that he made, grits souffle, unchanging except that I add a bit of smoked paprika on top, which I didn’t like growing up. I want to offer him something new, something that he might not have tried while he was alive, but that I came to love after, but I haven’t been able to. A little pour of rye whiskey, a little grits, collard greens maybe, biscuits, pan de muertos. I’ve never put a croissant on the alter for him, but every time I eat one I am, just a bit, asking for his forgiveness: for living, for forgetting, for being, ultimately, okay without him, even if I sometimes wish I weren’t.

It’s the anniversary of his death today. To remember my father, who was a good person (and even if he wasn’t, it doesn’t matter, he shouldn’t have died like this) yell at the DOT, your city council, your state reps, anyone who you can: speed cameras save lives, red light cameras save lives. People don’t have to die on the road. We can have a world where no one, not a child, not someone who could have retired but didn’t yet, no one, is crushed under the wheels of a car. It’s possible.