“Don’t say that.” I inched forward, almost slipping. “Dad, don’t leave us.”
“Please, read me my last rites.”
“I won’t.”
“Please, son. It could help God forgive me.”
“I won’t.”
He looked over his shoulder. “Word of advice, son.”
“Dad, come inside.”
“Find a nice girl to settle down with, but make sure you only care for her a little.”
“Dad, don’t do this—”
“You don’t want to love your wife too much.”
“Dad—”
“Life is complicated enough. Get a nice girl that you can live without, so when the time comes and she dies, you can move on.”
“Dad, at least sleep—”
“Enough!” His voice rose over the roof. “Pray for me!”
I looked away from him and stared at the snowflakes.
That morning, I had woken up to the first snow of the season. I’d thought this would be a day of playing. My brothers and sisters needed a good snow ball fight and sleighing on the big hills in the back. We’d earned a day of joy.
However, in that moment the flakes didn’t look like fun, they resembled little dead angels falling to the earth.
Not able to look at my dad, I spoke the words, “God, thank you for being with us right now.”
“Yes, Jesus.”
I swallowed. “We confess that we don’t understand why things happen the way they do, but we do know that you walk every path of life with us.”
“Yes.”
I turned my view to my Dad. He had his head bowed and hands in front of him in prayer. I let out a long breath. “Please, remind my father that You are sitting with him right now. God, we thank You because You never leave us.”
Dad cried, “Yes.”
“You never forsake us. You love us. We trust You, and pray this in Your name.” I made an invisible cross in the air. “Amen.”
“Take care of them, son.” Dad turned and dove into the air with his arms stretched out in surrender and his gaze at the ground below him.
“No!” I screamed so loud I thought my ears might have burst from the noise.
The seconds went by so slow. There was a moment Dad floated in the air as if God’s invisible hand had reached out from the heavens and caught him. It was a miracle. He hung there, suspended in silence.
My heart lodged in my throat.
Then, gravity took over.
“No! No!” Fast, I scooted forward on the roof, slipping and almost falling myself. Shingles and ice fell from my feet. “I can save you! I can save you!”
Dad fell straight downward, hurtling toward earth.
“Dad!” I was close to the edge, but not close enough to help. . .just close enough to watch him die. “Nooooooooo!”
Without screaming or crying, Dad smashed head-first into to the front yard. Blood splattered and sprayed the white snow around his mangled body.
“God, help me!” Sharp pain hit my chest. My body rocked with my sobbing. I couldn’t look away from the sight below me.
In the snow, Dad was no longer a living human body. He was now twisted ankles and broken legs, misshapen arms and a cracked neck split down the middle like an old tree stump. He was pockets of flesh, tendons, and organs.
Then, blood pooled out on his sides and resembled large, red wings.
I stopped crying and gazed at them.
Somehow there was beauty to the blood—a poetry to the darkness.
My brothers and sisters rushed out of the house screaming.
Shock glued me to the roof. I was unable to move or think. I could barely blink my eye lids. In a daze, I kept my attention on the sight of him—this bloodied snow angel.
Then I began to wonder if the image was an angel at all. Perhaps, it was a sleeping red and white bird.
Then suddenly, right before my eyes, my father’s smeared and crushed body hunched back upright and began to shift into something. His torso cracked and shifted, and bones popped as his spine curved and bent in on itself.
“Dad?”
His fingers and toes turned into sharp curving talons. His eyes disappeared as his skull changed shape and his eyelids fused into a solid sheet of skin.
A beak pushed out of his new face, pushing aside his lips and nostrils.
Then, orange eyes appeared. The rest of the head smoothed into shape. The misshaped body and limbs turned into feathers and real wings.
I shivered. “W-what. . ?”
The bird’s bright eyes gazed at me.
“Dad?” I reached my hands out to the sky. “What’s going on?”
Flames exploded around the bird, forcing my siblings to run back into the house.
“What’s going on?” I couldn’t leave the roof. The fire was a vortex of light and color, drawing my eyes and my mind toward it until I could not look away. The bird remained within the flames. Rising higher, the fire surged, danced and beckoned to me with burning fingers. Plumes of black smoke rose.
“Dad?” I sat there, transfixed and desperately yearning to be burned. “Come. . .to me.”