If I’d Known You Were Gonna Die, I Wouldn’t Have Baked You That Cake
It’s been 41 years since my dad died. When do I finally get to let go of this grief and anger?
A note from Lawrence
April 11, 1984, was my father’s forty-sixth birthday. My mother had just started her first job outside the house, so my sister and I, fourteen and eleven, had him to ourselves, and I decided I would bake him a cake. I had already learned, by disaster, that “from scratch” did not mean dumping things in a bowl and expecting a frosted cake to appear.
He read in the bedroom with the classical station on while we banged around the kitchen. I remember the cake. O, lord, how I remember the cake. Forty-one years on, I am still asking when I get to let go of the grief and the anger, and whether that is even how it works.
