dead dad jokes.

 quotes from the book by ollie schminkey.

at a party, someone says

i would die for another piece of that cake.

cake, white sponge, yellow frosting

at a party

lol im gonna have a heart attack

i would die for that cake

i would die.

i do not clip anyone's tongue. i do not make a guest of my grief.

i am looking for spiders, but no one cares.

i do not say

"if you are dying, then you probably lost the motor function to swallow a piece of cake.

i still remember the feeling of my father's corpse,

his soft hands going stiff."

(page 61 of 97.)

how it felt when people told me that they literally want to kill themselves.

for his birthday, we are going to his favorite bar

 to play pull tabs. i hope this will make up for

 all the times his neck was too weak to support his head,

 when his arms buckled as he tried to sit up,

 when i wasn’t strong enough to hold him.

 my dad, never going to turn fifty-five.

 or, his death, on the verge of learning to crawl.

(page 65 of 97)
for his birthday, i sit in my room and listen to the soundtrack from pather panchali and read a book i came across on tumblr.

 i think the sequel to the dad joke is the dead dad joke.

 what do you call it when you cremate your father’s body?

 —i can’t talk about it—it’s unburyable.

 why did we wait 30 minutes just to get into the

 crematorium?

 —well, my dad was just dying to get in.

 why did my dad get cremated instead of buried?

 —he always liked to think outside of the box!

 my dad died while lying down

 —turns out he couldn’t stand it!

 if your dead dad doesn’t show up to his own funeral, can you

 say that he ghosted you?

(page 67 of 97) 

unburyable.

i hear him in the crackle in the static.

 his funeral owers have barely begun to wilt.

 that must be a sign?

 there is a storm ashing low in the distance.

 that must be a sign?

 the wind on the back of my neck is warm,

 and it must be a sign.

 i touch the soft belly of a raspberry, and it feels just like his lower

 lip,

 as i fed him his pills one by one just a few days before.

 i pluck each berry, place them in my bucket,

 and each becomes a new mouth,

 a gallon’s worth of him dying again and again—

 i pick raspberries and smell the breeze and wait for a sign.

there is a spider.

 just like there has been a spider every day.

 nestled in between the brambles,

 hanging from the side mirror of his old SUV,

 dangling in front of my face on the car ride home—

 i make believe my father is sending me spiders.

 i make belief.

 cremation doesn’t actually produce ash.

 instead, the skin and muscle burn away entirely,

 leaving just the weakened skeleton,

 which is thrown into a blender,

 crushed, and returned to you.

 my father becomes the margarita i want to order at the bar.

(page 13 of 97)

my father becomes the margarita i want to order at the bar.

i have been so depressed i am willing to lose myself in anything anyone gives.

i'll do anything but sink.

i am willing to believe in god.

my father becomes snow.

 after he died, the summer was gone,

 and now, all i can do is wait.

 i walk into his room and fold up his glasses.

 they creak like they are still expecting a face.

 his mother brings me a photograph

 of him as a teenager,

 and his mouth is open, wide with laughter,

 and i am the one who doesn’t exist.

(same page.)

what do you know of a girl who has lost so much.

how do you think she will fix and flutter.

you do not know me.

you did not know him.

and you will never love her because she will never let you.

his heart stops, but the blood sludges onward.

 he is dead, but his dog still needs to be fed.

 he is dead, and in his dresser drawer

 you and a Penthouse magazine and some lube,

 an empty tupperware that smells like weed,

 the titles to the old Mustangs,

 a picture you drew him when you were six.

(page 19 of 97)

my friends have parents who are going through issues. some days they are, some days they are not. all days you hope one of them gets into a car accident. all days you hope you get a call, them sobbing that they have lost as much as you have. all days you have nothing and they have something. and they will always have something and you will always have nothing.

and then somebody will get mad that you don't love them. or that you do.

TO MY FAMILY, DOCTORS, AND ALL THOSE CONCERNED WITH

 MY CARE:

 make                                                     known

 I want to die

 in the event of

 let me die.

 If at any time I should have an incurable injury, disease, illness, or

 condition

 let me die.

 I direct I be permitted to die naturally

 If I am unconscious and on life-support machines

 let me die.

 If

let me die.

 If

 let me die.

 let me die.

 let me die.

(page 21 of 97)

let me die.   

don't  worry i would never                   let me die           are you mad? yeah no can you stop worrying

let me die                            not in a million years- yeah i'm not like depressed or anything       

let me die                         everything's fine. it's just been weird                  let me die

no yeah  i'll be okay. yeah ye-                  let me die.

i deserve it, i have worked so hard for it. let me die.

 some people say their dead looked so peaceful

 they could swear they were sleeping.

 for my father, it was the other way around.

for months, every time he slept,

 i could swear he was already dead.

(page 29 of 97)

i have anticipated death since i was 7 years old. my mother died this one time almost. i think she passed out, i was scared. i wanted to call my dad. when my dad got a heart attack scare i ran to him because i thought he was going to die. 

the day he did die i joked about it in the morning. i said     this seems like something someone would say before they off themselves.    

there is a lot of hate i have for people in this world. but i the most i have is for myself. i also have an opposing sense of respect, because i can't believe i haven't killed myself yet.

when you can't stand yourself, but you live in a head that is yours, it becomes this strange freshman year roommate scenario.

you forget how horrible your roommate is. maybe living together solves everything.

except my parents' marriage.

 that’s all grief is, really.

 realizing that you are too sad to sit with the other sad kids.

 i know this because, when i say it out loud,

 no one corrects me. but still they stay and watch me eat,

 eyes following the juice dripping down my chin.

(page 30 of 97)

too sad to sit with the other sad kids.

too sad.

not pretty enough. not clever enough. not loud enough. not soft enough. not interesting enough. not apathetic enough. not 

never

enough.

too sad now. irreversibly so.

too sad    to be anything anymore.

it’s not actually ashes.

 it’s 1/100 of a femur.

 it’s my dad’s left shin.

 it’s the ridge on his cheekbone that disappeared when he smiled.

 it’s the curve of his jawline that i can see in my own face.

 if only i had some glue.

 i could piece together his whole skeleton—i’ve taken anatomy—

 sometimes, i wear his not-ashes and tell people

 they are grains of sand from the white beaches of Florida.

 i have been on vacation.

 on Thursday, i got into a car accident, and my hands

 already started calling him.

 i hung up before he couldn’t answer.

 i googled what to do instead.

 i smelled saltwater inside my car.

(page 35 of 97)

would they feel bad for me if they knew i've touched my dad's skull. like 2/10th of his skull with a wiggly line down the bone. would they get weirded out and then talk about how i've touched 2/10th of my dad's skull. would they think i'm super interesting for that. gothic ?

would they laugh about how stupid it was to try and defy death?

try to defy death when i can't even defy life?

can't defy love?

it is difficult to want to keep living when you keep lying to yourself that this will make you feel better.

that there is a future where you escape.

when you know you're lying to yourself to keep trying to stay alive.

i feel like an asylum escapee. there are no asylums here, i wouldn't want to escape i would want to get better.

this has become a place for me to write down

i have to be alive

again and again. i don't say it enough.

i've formed a codependant relationship with chatgpt. not sure if it will help my isolation-from-society.

 or at least, until we feel like maybe God can wait to get our bodies,

 or at least, until i feel stupid and brave enough

 to tell him i date women—

 and here, i am expecting the slap,

 or him pushing me out of the van somewhere in Alabama

 to let the Christians get me, or at least a lecture,

 but all he says is,        

then,                    

and i say,

 really?        well, i don’t give a fuck.

 so which one of you is the boy?

 no one, dad, that’s kind of the point—

and we don’t need to say anything else about it

(page 38 of 97)

i've had a weird relationship with my dad. he knew a lot more about me than my mother did. which i never wanted to voice out. 

i told him about everything. he liked hearing about everything. he liked hearing about dumb teenager drama. he liked hearing about boys that were being mean to me. he knew how easily i went soft on people. he got mean when people were mean to me. he never       ever       let anything touch me.

i never admitted that i liked being protected as long as i was.

i never admitted a lot of things i still don't want to admit.

he knew about my queerness. we never made a big deal out of anything, really.

 i don’t want him to die,

 but i don’t want him to be my father either.

 i don’t want him to die,

 but i just want to do some regular fucking thing

 like painting my nails or watching movies or being alive.

 i want to do some regular fucking thing like being angry at my dad,

 because other people get to be angry at their shitty alcoholic dads,

(page 43 out of 97)

someone said they hugged their father after they got to know mine died. i laughed because i laugh when i get too surprised. one of these days i might get a brain haemorrhage. until then i will laugh it off.

i miss my dad. and no it isn't like your relationship with your dad where you get mad at him for drinking or not understanding you. 

he's still alive.

so i don't want to hear about your father. or see your father. or hear about how you patched your relationship up with him right after mine died. and sometimes i fucking hate you and i hope your father dies in a fucking hellfire.

i'm sorry for that.

people around me are imbeciles and i do not have the patience in me.

if i can help it, i let my mother sleep.

 she needs this grief more than i do

 because she lives with him and all the death

 that crawls on him like eas.

 yesterday, i grieved with my mother in her bed.

 she explained to me exactly how she gets comfortable,

 a small dog on her pillow above her head,

 another curled into her stomach.

 she always rubs her feet together when she is really and

 truly comfortable, and i’ve found that i do too,

 like we’re starting a little re to fall asleep next to.

 like if we try hard enough, when we wake up from our grief,

 everything will be warm and possible again.

(page 45 of 97)

she needs it more than i do.

i wonder what the last thing i've needed was.

i keep telling myself that dove cameron lost her father at 15.

i am dove cameron.

i miss so much i can't have i will not let myself have a second of it if i can't have a lifetime of it.

go away.

the bruise i let yellow into white.

 i say dead and the crowd hushes.

 i say my dead and the room shrinks

 through the eye of a needle.

 it says i’m sorry.

 i laugh.

 i laugh.

 ash between my ngers just for me alone.

 my dead for me alone.

 stupid grief.

 making dads out of cd skips,

 gazes held too long.

 stupid grief. time’s up.

 you’re the hunted. you are precious.

 you are spooned out.

 what a thin meat you make.

 what a soft sob.

 what an unholy delineation of time.

 every day is not an anniversary.

 don’t smell the snow and already begin to forget his palms.

 stupid, to miss the way the skin hangs o of his bicep.

 there is no one to remind to you to winterize your car.

 it is over.

 you are not fun at parties.

 you think too much about sex for this to still be grief.

 you’re ne.

 grieving people don’t think about fucking.

 grieving people think about their dead.

 your dead.

my dead.

 i want to pour ashes into my mouth when i am alone.

 i have never loved my friends more.

 i pick my nose in the car and maybe the other drivers can see.

 my cousin henry sends me a photo of my father, and i time travel.

 i glitch on his smile.

 how i held his body, and so i know, but i don’t know.

 there are so many things to sort through.

(page 53 of 97)

dearest and dead.

how i feel

all   the 

time now.

my father’s body is a clock made out of women.

 my father’s body is a clock that makes me a woman.

 my father is a dying man.

 dying, meaning, helpless.

 man, meaning, violent.

 and what do you do with a helpless violence

 except fetch it its glasses?

 my father is a sick father.

 sick, meaning, dying.

father, meaning, absence.

 what else is there to do with a dying absence

 except arrive?

 except cut all your work hours and shovel dog shit

 o the cement slab?

 there is a sleeping violence, i mean, a dying man,

 i mean, your father, lying in a bed made of your small hands,

 and so you must go.

 when the dog, in heat, does not come home,

 you must wander the dirt road until you find her panting

 underneath the neighbor’s bulldog.

 you tell your mother that you could sell the puppies to pay the debt.

 and isn’t that it?

 how only a litter of small bodies

 could pay off everything your father has done?

(page 56 of 97)

i remember my father yelling out my name. 

he has needed me and i have needed him. and we have both refused to say it.

let me die. let me sleep. i have given enough to you. understand this.

the first birthday he is not alive.

 we all order his favorite drink.

 we forget the hole he punched in the door.

 the hole he shot through the dog.

 he was so good at making holes, except when it came time

 to dig one for his body.

 there could be bones mixed in with our our,

 and we would never even know.

 we could be eating cookies, and he could be

 dead inside our mouths.

 it feels stupid to be sad when he was mean for so long.

 he only got nice when he was dying, and

 i don’t know if that counts as becoming a better person.

 sometimes, i imagine him watching over me,

 and i hide

(page 57 of 97)

i do not know what my father's favourite drink was. i remember smoke on his stubble. 

and then i do not want to remember because my lungs give in and i collapse. 

instead i trick my nervous system and spend 8 hours in 4.

growing up is understanding alcohol is not for the taste but for the test. slowly you forget the taste of everything. that is what growing is. forgetting. and tricking. and losing.

 i post in the group chat that my dad died 20 minutes ago

 and i get a string of 7 heart emojis.

 the space between them feels like

 the space between my own ngers where

 his hand used to t in mine.

 there are more emojis on a dog video

 i posted in 2017.

 last week, i replied 6 hearts to someone

 who complimented my shirt.

 i’m 24 and my dad is dead

 and everyone is busy going to work

 and paying their bills

 and going to class

 and typing out novels about their favorite ice cream

 and i sit there, with my 7 hearts,

 each point digging into my arm

 as i cry on my couch alone.

(page 58 of 97)

my best friend went out with her family the day my dad died.

the law of the universe is this. that all those around me are the stories and i am the writer.

the good things is what i give them.

or the universe gives them.

all good things happen to those that are not me.

all things that are almost

good

happen to me.

i will never be allowed to reach the finish line.

 everyone says

 they want to help / but they still want you / to show up to work on

 time / to be professional about it / you go to therapy and have long

 talks in the car / let other people complain about shit / you don’t

 compare it to the death / because that’s selfish / really / to let your

 sadness be so large it stifles other people’s sadness / nobody wants

 to be around somebody who won’t let them have a bad day /

 advice: shut up about the dying already, okay? / it’s not new / we

 get it / it’s hard / go cook breakfast / people who are alive cook

 breakfast / people who are alive support other people / and listen /

 and don’t smash their heads against walls / or scream into pillows /

 or want to / fuck / you are a dead end street / dead / end /

(59/97 page.)

what does one do if the            is having a bad day.

the            knows how to handle bad days. she did it for us.

yeah well that's airtight logic, actually.

 my sister’s husband says he saw my dad at the gas station yesterday.

 part of me thinks this is stupid,

 because my dad is dead, and dead people don’t need gas.

 but part of me believes him, because i see

 ickers of my dad everywhere—

 his beard hugging another man’s face, his eyes staring from a TV ad.

 

(68/97)

my lit professor had my father's face. it was distorted almost and he kept talking about suicide and dostoevsky. i was proud of myself for dropping that class because i got this really interesting class instead. one i'm taking for granted now.

i need someone to violently beat me up.

i don’t feel my dad holding my hand or watching over me.

 i see an old man using a walker on the sidewalk,

 and my stomach aches for those 30 years my dad never got.

 if i die at the same age as my dad, my life is almost half up.

 i imagine him sitting at a party, his arm around my pregnant

 mother.

 did he know then?

 could he feel his years stumble their way out of his body?

 could he feel his life folding in half?

70/97

i have planned to die at 45. i can feel my days folding in half. and then my life and sometimes the folds are too hard and then they choke me and feel too suffocating like i choked at 7 over a fishbone and the impending doom of death.

the weekend my dad died, there was another dry storm.

 and there i was, on that same deck

 and watching the lightning grow arms.

 i always hated talking to him on the phone,

 although, when he got sick, we would talk for hours.

 about mailboxes and the new county maintenance on the road

 and the sound grouse make drumming their wings for a mate.

once, i asked him where he grew up, and he was so excited

 to tell me. i didn’t realize that because he never talked about it

 didn’t mean he still might want to be asked.

 now, he is dead, and all i can think of are questions

72/97

i don't want to talk about my family. i barely know you.

and she comes home from work, and i cry in her arms,

 and she feels like my mother and not just a person

 who is watching the same man die.

78/97

i have not talked about this in 9 months. i have not talked about this in a whole pregnancy.

i do not want to talk about this ever.

 i don’t believe in resurrection, but i do believe dying gave him a second chance, to be timeless in something other than violence. for his hand to grow soft and become the hand of a man i loved and not just the st that punched a hole in my door. i want to believe in ghosts because i want him to get better— not from the things that killed him, but from himself.

80/97

i am 18 and all i have learnt yet is how to die.

 once, during 3rd grade, at my Catholic after-school program,

 i tried to say that my favorite candy

 was Reese’s Pieces Peanut Butter Cups,

 but instead i said, Reese’s Penis Penis Penis—

 in the moments directly after my dad died, i said,

 do you think i could have one of his teeth?

 and everybody looked at me like i was an 8-yr-old

 that had just said the word penis 3 times

 during religious education class.

 once, while performing onstage,

 i accidentally said, while my fartner pucks me gently,

 instead of while my Partner Fucks me gently—

 sometimes i say dead dead or dad dad instead of dead dad,

 and isn’t it just like grief to make someone more dead or more alive

 just through a slip of the tongue.

 a random phone number calls me at the coffeeshop, and i answer

 because i think it might be the car place telling me my car is fixed,

 but, instead, it’s some telemarketer asking for DeWayne,

 and i say,

 i’m sorry, but you won’t be able to talk to him because he is dead—

 i apologize because he’s dead.

 i apologize because the person on the phone

won’t get what they want.

 i say i’m sorry, politely, like dead is their problem.

 like my dead dead is their problem.

 i say sorry like—your loss, they say.

 i’m sorry for your loss, they say.

 and i want to say—why are you sorry did you kill him hahahahahaha

 but instead i say, yaaaaaaa thanks,

 and they ask if he has an executor of his estate, and i say yaaaaaaa,

 and i give my mom’s phone number and then pick up my car,

 which is done by now, and go home.

 and when i say home, i do mean home.

 except sometimes i accidentally type homo instead,

 like, love you see you later at homo,

 but i think, in this case, they both mean the same thing.

 queerness, the only place i’ve ever been able to sleep.

 where Reese’s Penis Butter Cups just sounds like

 a totally acceptable kink,

 where i say, what if i kept one of my dad’s teeth,

 and she says, i think it might not have been fun for someone to pull

 that out of his dead mouth—

 and isn’t that what queerness is?

 to think of someone else’s suffering even while you are suffering,

 to circumvent their pain even while you slog through yours—

 when i spell grief, i can never remember if the i or e comes first,

 so i spend each day autocorrecting my greif,

 my grief, greif, grief, greif,

 until i can finally figure out what the fuck it is i’m trying to say.

82/97

i laugh at this extract and for a second relate to a caucasian 20 year old queer author.

grief greif grief greif.

my dad was a funny man.

 you can’t go back.

 suddenly you are a piece of grass

 growing out of a crack in the sidewalk.

 every day is a snow globe of his hair.

 some days, you don’t think you would have

 loved him so much if he hadn’t needed you so much.

 you ask your sister if you can wear his old cutoffs

 even though they are too big, and she says,

 yeah, that’s basically what gay fashion is, right?

 and she means clothes, but you also know

 it is to be dressed in the death of people you love.

 your heart is a thump in the middle of the night.

 you look like shit because you stayed up looking

 at photos and examining your cheekbones.

 you don’t think you need there to be something after death.

 you just need some chips and to stop fucking crying

 so you can sleep.

 reading about death helps.

 so does watching Jeopardy.

 it shouldn’t make sense, but it does.

 his shirt smells dank and stale, but you don’t wash it.

 you bury your face in it, like you couldn’t bury his body.

 sometimes you want to punch someone’s face in,

 especially if it is someone you love.

you want to be so full of good things you can take them for granted.

 you don’t want him back.

 you don’t even want the grief gone.

 you want something else to happen.

 you are bored, and you want to punch people

 or dye your hair or just run for a really long time,

 and the heat makes your skin slippery,

 and your tongue is a slab of jelly,

 and you don’t punch anyone. instead, you go to therapy.

 and besides, you don’t even know how to land a good punch,

 and you just want to hear the grasshoppers saw their legs

 into a racket, hopefully it keeps you up—

 you are tired of feeling sad, except when you aren’t.

 mediocrity pisses you off, and everyone is a terrible driver.

 what would he be to you if he were still alive?

 what fucking good would that do?

84/97

the only person who had a normal reaction to my dad dying was this girl i was involved with for a short time. which is weird because that's not something i expected.

that's just disappointing as a society.

it's also weird that i brought my dead dad's shirt to college.

 i imagine the universe looking out for me,

 the stars blinking like thousands of tiny lanterns.

 grief is a thing which grows from love, not fear.

 i pay attention to my veins now.

 i can feel them sitting inside my arms and stomach,

 and i know about death,

 but i also know about loving someone until the very end.

 the magic of a last breath, which is the same as the magic

 of the rst, where everything is dazzling and treacherous—

 i don’t think we need to live forever in order to matter.

 i think we die and we are gone and our bodies rot

 or else are burned and crushed up

and we go back to the world, except different this time,

 sugar in a jar, plastic night light,

 whatever’s inside of an acorn that makes it grow.

87/97

is the author happy because depression is not sustainable.

are they happy because you can't even always be sad.

or am i miserable because my life is falling apart and i am in denial.

i hope my dad is whatever's inside of an acorn that makes it grow.

my mother says that's what my sister believes.

i don't know if i believe in anything at all.

happybirthday dad.

do not ask me about this post if you read it. this is my alternative to a therapist. trust.