Cadences (31/35 + epilogue)
Word Count: ~2300
Summary: Life doesn’t get much better than when you get to spend it with your favorite fella. Follow the boys as they navigate from young love to newlyweds to fatherhood and beyond.
Author’s Note: Thanks to the betas, Becca and Kerry.
WARNING: This chapter includes death of an OC. I’m sorry!
Kurt and Blaine are 47, Addie is 16, and Declan is 14.
Addie’s Journal
July 2, 2041
I have basically been harassing my fathers to let me drive for the past 72 hours. It’s like neither one of them have time to get in the car with me. But I need to keep practicing so that I don’t fail my driver’s test in October. Why don’t they understand this?
I bet they want me to fail. I bet they think that I’m not mature enough to have a driver’s license. I bet they’ll never let me drive. I bet they’ll somehow keep me from driving for my whole life. Even when I’m a grownup. I bet they think I’m stupid.
Addie no one thinks that. We’ve just been busy. But now with the holiday weekend coming up we’ll have plenty of time to let you drive.
Poop! How dare you read my intimate thoughts in my intimate thoughts journal! You are fired!
Adelaide. When I walked into the room you said “Oh! I forgot something … in the basement.” Then you looked meaningfully from me to the OPEN JOURNAL. You were basically telegraphing that I was supposed to read it. You even nodded your head towards it.
Fine. Can we practice driving now?
The phone is ringing. As soon as I’m done answering/talking we’ll go practice, okay?
Okay.
…
It turns out that the phone call was actually Pop calling to tell us that Mama died. I guess driving doesn’t seem so important anymore.
July 3, 2041
We’re leaving early to drive to Ohio for Mama’s funeral. The actual funeral isn’t until Saturday because with the Fourth of July in the middle of the week, they need to spread out the wake and all that.
I always feel weird writing Mama, but that’s what I call her when I talk to her. Or I call her Mamacita because that’s what Daddy always calls her. One time I asked him why he calls her that since they don’t speak Spanish and he was like “I have no idea why I do that. I think I started when I was a teenager and I just liked it.” But when I talk about her, I refer to her as Grandma or my grandma or my grandmother. Because when I say Mama, people think I’m talking about my mom and that I’m like from the prairie or something. But my mom’s name is DiDi and that’s what I call her.
Anyway. We’re leaving in a few minutes and I’m just so worried about my dad. He’s so, so sad. And this was really shocking. She wasn’t even sick. She just died from a massive heart attack. One minute alive, talking to Pop while they were eating lunch and the next second not alive.
I just read what I wrote and my brain is obviously all over the place, so I’m going to finish packing and we have to leave. I guess that’s what I get for trying to write coherently before 7 in the morning.
…
I just keep thinking about how one second she was alive and the next second she wasn’t. (sorry this writing is all shaky, I’m writing in the car.) Poop just offered to let me drive. Is this real life?
…
IT IS REAL LIFE. They let me drive for like an hour on route 80 in Pennsylvania and it was exhilarating. I don’t think I’m sad enough right now. I feel like this isn’t real life. We’re at a rest stop because the dads decided they needed coffee and Declan needed to go to the bathroom, but I wanted to just stay in the car.
Maybe it’ll all feel more real when we get there.
…
Seeing Pop’s face made it all feel real. (Pop, not Poop. Poop also looks sad, but Pop looks sadder.)
The last time I saw my grandparents (both sets) was at Christmas and Pop looks like he aged about a hundred years since then. He was using a cane, because he broke his hip a few years ago and sometimes it’s a little weak, but now he’s like REALLY using a cane. Not just like walking around normal and holding it jauntily. And it’s not a pretty wooden one now; it’s like a metal old person cane. This cane is no joke. Why am I so fixated on this cane? I don’t know what my brain is doing.
July 4, 2041
We went over to Cooper and Katinka’s today. They said even though Mama died we should really have a barbecue. Because she loved barbecues. Her and Pop met at a barbecue.
It was a fun day, I’m not going to lie. Everyone was a little sad and Pop asked to go home early, so Daddy drove him home and then came back. But they have a pool and the food was good and we made fresh guacamole. I mean, what more could you ask for?
I kept feeling like I was waiting for somebody else to arrive though. Like I kept walking over to the driveway like Mama’s car was going to pull up at any moment. It’s a weird feeling.
I don’t really know anyone else who died. Or, more accurately, I was never this close to someone who died before. My first grade teacher died, but I was already in fourth grade and it really didn’t affect. One of our neighbors died, but I didn’t really know him because he was sick and always in the house.
I just feel like my brain is all over the place and I’m not making sense. But I also want to get all of these thoughts down on paper. They feel important. They feel like things I might forget eventually. And while I’m sad, I don’t want to forget.
July 5, 2041
We’re at Cooper’s in between the wakes. I don’t understand wakes. I don’t think I want to have one. It’s so weird to have everyone stand around look at a dead body. I mean, I know I’m not the first person to ever feel this way. Plenty of people don’t have wakes, or have closed caskets, but I feel like this is one of those things that should have gone out of style a hundred years ago. It just seems so barbaric.
The dads are holding up pretty well. I’ve seen them cry a million times, like when Declan first started talking, when Mama was sick with pneumonia, that kind of stuff. Also at made for TV movies that deal with any type of adversity. They are men who are truly in touch with their feelings. But neither of them are crying now. Aren’t you supposed to cry at funerals? Although I’m not crying either, so maybe this isn’t the sad part yet. I suppose the sad part will be tomorrow when they bury the body.
…
I used to worship, and I mean WORSHIP, the ground that Sabine and Hannah walked on. But now they don’t seem as cool as they used to. And I don’t mean that in a bad way, but they’re just people. I like hanging out with them. I guess that’s what happens as you get older. You start seeing people for what they are as opposed to what you want them to be.
July 6, 2041
Well, that was emotional. Out of nowhere Daddy got up and gave the eulogy. Usually he avoids speaking in public, says he’s not good at it, that no one wants to listen to him stutter and mess up. (I think he’s full of shit.) But what he said today was amazing. And like, if anyone, anywhere were ever to say things like that about me, I can’t even imagine it. Because it’s like, he didn’t just love his mom, the way anyone who loves their parents love their parents. (That’s an awkward sentence, but I think you know what I mean.) He respected her.
In any event, it turns out that the crying at funerals happens during the eulogy. I don’t think there was a dry eye in the house. Declan cried. And I haven’t seen Declan cry in years and years. Not because he’s like a tough guy or anything, but just because he’s not a crier. Unlike his emotional fathers.
I was really proud of my dad. I could cry just thinking about it. And he didn’t even stutter that much. And he kept his composure even while he was singing for her.
…
I found the piece of paper that my dad wrote down his eulogy on and I asked him if I could keep it. He said yes, so I’m just going to tape it in here:
My mother once told me that at her funeral she wanted me to play “Sunday Morning Coming Down” by Johnny Cash on the guitar and that I didn’t have to worry about saying a word. I told her that it is one of the most inappropriate songs I could ever imagine playing at a funeral, seeing as how it’s about a hangover, and she said “Obviously. That’s why I want it.”
And I will play that Johnny Cash song, because that’s what she wanted, and that’s what I promised, but it turns out that I’m not nearly as afraid of public speaking as I once was and I have a few things I’d like to say. This is the very least I can do.
When I was a kid, I firmly believed that sun rose and set with my mother. That she could do no wrong, that she was perfect. And then when I was teenager I decided that she didn’t particularly like me and I stopped liking her as much. She was smart enough to send me to a therapist, and that started me on a better road. But it wasn’t until the day I left for college that everything started falling into place.
I was terrified. I don’t think I’d ever been so scared of anything in my entire life as I was at the prospect of leaving my home, my family, the only place I’d ever known. Even if I hated high school, even if I often felt like a burden to my parents, I was having a really hard time imagining what was waiting for me in New York. I remember being really relieved that my mom was with me, that she could help me with everything. We were sitting in the cab and she told me I needed to try. And I was so hurt that she would say such a thing, that she thought I didn’t try. But I realize now she was saying it because that’s what I needed to hear. She was telling me that she knew I could do it. And then she told me she was proud of me. I almost cried. I was so happy to hear that she was proud of me.
I’ve basically spent my life since then just trying to make my mom proud. And my dad, too, and my husband, and my kids. But it all started with her, that day in a very smelly cab. Luckily as I got older, life got easier. And it got easier to talk to my parents about things. I know she was proud of me. And I plan on making her proud for the rest of my life. It’s the least I can do.
After that, he played the song. Everyone laughed at the line “and caught the Sunday smell of someone frying chicken.” Because I don’t think there’s anyone in my dad’s family who doesn’t know how much chicken means to him.
But now I’m listening to the song again, and I think I understand why Mama wanted it played at her funeral. There’s a line about how “there’s nothing short of dying, that’s half as lonesome as it sounds...” I bet she wanted us to remember that she’s the one who left and that we still have each other. She’s smart like that. She would think like that. She would make sure we all remembered that.
…
Declan and I are sharing the living room, the way we usually do when we come to Ohio. One of us takes the couch and then there’s also a surprisingly comfortable air mattress. Tonight he’s on the couch and I’m on the air mattress. But I feel kind of bad because his feet hang off the end of the couch. When I told him that he said his feet hang off the end of the air mattress too.
He’s asleep now, but earlier he was telling me that one of the first things he remembers after coming to live with us was when the whole family came for Christmas that year. Like he remembers other things, little things, but this is really clear to him. That Mama came and brought her dog Bob.
I’ve never seen Declan so sad. I’m sad too, but somehow it hurts to see him so sad. Isn’t life hard enough?
July 7, 2041
We were supposed to go home today, but I went and woke my dads up last night after talking to Declan. I told them about how sad he was and that I think he needed to be cheered up.
Instead of going home, we’re going to Cedar Point today and tomorrow we’ll drive home.
My dads are pretty amazing.
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