Dad died on his throne. No, not the toilet, (not that throne), his patriarchal throne. A green vinyl with an end table on the left, (dad being a lefty). A pauper throne.

The recliner was a mottled shade of green, something between two day old wilted lettuce and a pale sickly pallor, (Linda Blair green). The vinyl was cracked and split with age and wear, the worst of these patched with strips of silver duct tape. His scepter, a bottle of Genesee beer, his crown a wreath of cigarette smoke hanging in the air. The king upon his throne.

Dictator.

Tyrant.

Dad was ranting, raving when he died. This was not much of a shock, Dad was always ranting and raving about something.

He spent his days watching the world go to hell through the grainy, flickering screen of our old Zenith television. Shouting solutions thick with racial slurs and cursing that would make a drunken sailor blush as though they might somehow hear him through the television. The intrepid armchair warrior.

I don't recall what had set him off on this sudden outburst of rage, it never took much. Dad's mood could change as quick and easy as flicking a switch. One moment he was laughing, joking, the next he was snarling and slavering like some rabid animal. Everyone of us in that house walked on eggshells. It was like navigating a minefield, blindfolded. One misstep and you were blown to hell.

I had misstepped.

At least Dad seemed to think so. I may have done nothing, what mattered was that he thought I had. He began with berating me, calling me an idiot, accusing me of being slap happy, lacking in what it took to be a man. What I had done, (whatever that might have been), was proof of my lacking manhood. Then came the health accusations. How every time I made him lose his temper I was taking years off his life. There was no way it could have been the beer, whiskey and cigarettes, it had to be my fault.

Dad slid forward, perching on the edge of his seat, springs creaking and groaning in protest. He glowered up at me from behind his thick, horn rimmed glasses, thick gray brows knit together in fury. “Everytime you make me lose my temper you're killing me!” He bellowed at me.

I should say, would have bellowed at me if he had finished the sentence. Which he did not. He began to say it when his eyes suddenly bugged behind the lenses of his glasses, mouth frozen in the act of forming that first word. That word, ‘every’, stretched out sounding like a cross between a belch and a needle being dragged across a record album. His mouth fell open forming a shocked O, his head tilting to one side. An image of the horse from the movie Animal House, (the one that had a heart attack in the dean's office), flashed through my mind. A giggle began scurrying up my throat but was cut short by dad lurching as though he intended to get up. Instead he pitched forward, face first onto the hardwood wood floor. I did what I had been trained through verbal and physical abuse to do. I stepped aside.

Dad hated when people got in his way.

He hit the floor hard, the whole house shook. Dad was not a small man.

Now he was a dead man.

I killed him.

The official cause was not death by idiot son, rather something more medical in nature. Massive Terminal Cardiac Event. Which almost sounded to me like it should be in a sports venue or perhaps the Circus Big Top.

“Come one, come all! Step right up and get your tickets to the Massive Terminal Cardiac Event! It's a once in a lifetime event!”

Medical professionals like to add extra words to make things sound more serious. Massive or miniscule, Terminal is Terminal.

Dead is dead.

Death does not come in small, medium or large.

One size fits all. All are welcome.

Death does not discriminate. How ironic if it did. The bigot, bigoted.

Then came the seemingly endless parade of mourners, friends and family speaking in hushed solemn voices, offering condolences or making empty promises, “If there's anything you need…” No one would acknowledge the elephant in the room. No, not Aunt Clara, this was something far larger, (as hard as that maybe to image). It looked over me, my siblings and our mother like a shadow, but not really a shadow. A presence that imposed itself on us in the wake of dad's death. It hung in the air around us like the haze of smoke from dads cigarettes. Everyone knew it was there but no one would acknowledge it. A feeling that wove itself around us, entangled itself in our lives seeping into our lungs with each breath.

A secret we don’t talk about even now, some forty years later.

Relief.