When Life Lost its Color
When Life Lost its Color
Alexander Mallory
“Think about how Dada has loved you when he’s sober,” my father texted. I read that message twice, three times, before it finally registered. His words were married to an ask: He wanted me to rebook him a flight from Honolulu to Omaha, where he had scheduled a detox appointment.
Eight hours later, alcohol withdrawal claimed my father’s life. He was 54. He never boarded that flight.
Most of July 10, 2020, has evaporated from my mind, though I still have a few memories. I can hear Ma’s cries of anguish when she called to tell me he passed in the night. I still have an image of the deck where I took her phone call: above me, pine trees knifed into a cloudless, blue sky. Beneath me, beams of oak wood still damp from the cold night. And inside me, a faint and impossible hope: Maybe this was just a dream. Maybe I’ll wake from it, like I had so many times before.
Ma was direct: “I need you here.” I was at a bachelor party. It was 7:00 am. This wasn’t happening. This happens in movies, not in real life. This happens to other families, not to mine. I staggered across the deck before collapsing into a lawn chair. I remember the wood, close to my face, and then watching it retreat as my best friend lifted me from my downward sprawl. His name is Sean Roberts, and I remember noting, even amidst unspeakable pain, Sean’s a lot stronger than I realized.
In the minutes that followed, shock soon surrendered to the cold light of logistics: I needed to book a flight, and I needed to do it now. No one can prepare for the death of a loved one. Politicians utter phrases like “death with dignity.” But death can’t be dignified. It’s ugly, hard, and riddled with emotion. I knew it existed. But I never knew how much it hurt—nor how it unravels routines and disrupts dreams.
*
Sean drove me from Breckenridge to Denver International Airport—two hours that felt like two years; two hours that felt like two minutes. My mind spun like a tire that wouldn’t catch. Devastated and disoriented, I wept. Sean wept with me. Over and over, I screamed. Sean simply listened. The whole time his eyes remained fixed on the road before us, objecting to the unfairness with his silence as I raged with my voice.
It seems only fitting that it was Sean who drove me. He was always Jaji’s favorite. (In the Ho-Chunk language, Jaji means dad). The two of us grew up together. We rode bikes, built forts, hosted Halo tournaments, and drank gallons of chocolate milk. Ever the athlete, he taught me about sports, and I taught him about music. He was—and is—the closest friend I had to a brother. From Colorado to Cusco, we had traveled the world. We climbed mountains, sauntered streets, and patronized pubs.
On our last international trip, as Sean and I strolled through Cusco, we reminisced about those earlier days, our minds turning to our grade school track meets. We reflected on how central Jaji was to each of those meets, always occupying the center of the field, even if his “baby boy”—as he would affectionately call me—wasn’t competing. He knew each kid by name and if he didn’t, he simply made one up. He was everybody’s coach, and everybody’s parent. It didn’t matter who it was—friend or foe—he rooted for them, ran alongside them, and celebrated their victory, whether first or last.
I shared these memories with Jaji, and he responded, “I am so glad that memory shines through for you rather than my failures. It does so because you have Jesus living in your heart.” He was a tender warrior, my father, unafraid of emotion and always honest about his intentions.
“Thanks, Jaji,” I texted. “Me too.”
*
Unexpected loss is traumatic. It’s the violent twist of a tonearm across a smooth record. Sixteen missed calls that dreadful morning. A voicemail from The Queen’s Medical Center in Honolulu. My eyes drenched, and my vision blurred. Nothing was normal; everything upside down. The only constant was Sean. I knew Jaji was on a binge in Hawaii, but confronting death with your best friend? Love is not a big-enough word. Sean didn’t flinch. He simply grabbed my bag, started the car, and let me weep the whole way to the airport. It’s not often that someone comes along who can comfort and cry. Sean did both. He is my hero, my brother, my friend.
Two months after Jaji’s passing, Sean texted, “Let’s take a road trip through the Southwest.” At the time, COVID restrictions remained ubiquitous and traveling abroad was dubious. A domestic National Park excursion felt just right.
We would drive from our hometown in northeastern Nebraska to the Colorado Rockies and spend our first evening in Breckinridge, the same town where I’d answered that fateful call. I didn’t sleep that night; afraid I’d awake to yet more life-alternating news. Even so, it felt good to confront the pain. To revisit the place where life had lost its color.
We went out that evening with a friend who offered to let us crash at her place. The bars were busy, outdoor tables lined the streets, and the tourists blended with the locals—all searching for something, searching for nothing. I wanted our time together to be the same as before: laughs and libations, carefree conversations, sarcasm and silliness. Despite my best efforts, I couldn’t shake the knot of sadness.
We spent the next couple days roaming through Arches National Park, walking the trails, crossing washes, and climbing rock formations. Mile after mile, we walked—sometimes in conversation, sometimes in silence. It felt a lot like grief. Some days I need to talk about it; other days I need to sit in solitude. Every day, I need a friend.
We scaled unexplored parts of the trail, and the sun scorched our backs. We struggled in the heat, but the pain felt good. With death, too, we struggle to acknowledge a person’s loss, but the acknowledgement sets us free, no matter how hard it might sting.
Grief requires witnessing. The trail and grief converged, and I learned to navigate both. But not alone. Sean was there, never afraid to recount both the distant and the stolen memories. He understood what so few do: that his acknowledgment, however brief or long, kept Jaji alive.
Sean shared his favorite attributes about Jaji—his loud laugh and big smile. His ability to make anyone in front of him feel like royalty. Sean also knew platitudes fell flat so he listened instead of talked. He listened when I lamented about how insensitive some of our friends were. When I complained about the chronic loneliness, the dismissive comments, and the instances where those around us turned their face at the ugly reality of grief. Shared grief is shared humanity.
The trail widened and narrowed, rose and fell, emerged and re-emerged. Like grief, it was non-linear. We got lost on the trail, we got lost in the grief. Circles and circles of dirt, circles and circles of sorrow. But Jaji was there—in every mile we hiked, in the unruly trees and towering rocks we passed, and in the stories we told in remembrance of him.
*
Before the road trip, the last face-to-face interaction I had with Jaji was a typical one: He kindled a bonfire for me and my friends in our backyard. Ever thoughtful, he made salsa and surprised us with a cooler full of Dos Equis and Corona. I would later chide him for providing the booze because I resented drinking around him, knowing his temptation was far too great.
He texted me later that night. “I apologize for buying booze,” he offered. “I didn’t know you guys had made plans not to drink. I wanted it to be normal. By my standards. It was selfish. Please forgive me.”
Even in the pain, he continued to teach me that faith is best expressed in love. In hindsight, though, I pity him—his wanting it to be normal. I wish I would have told him that normalcy is never really normal—it’s just what we knew at a previous time. It’s an illusion. We were normal. Our family’s struggle was normal. And the group’s decision to ditch the drinks to be sensitive to his addiction was normal—even good—an act that should have been commended, not condemned.
But I know it wasn’t normal for Jaji. He felt ashamed by it. He thought we didn’t want to drink because of his problem, his addiction. He couldn’t separate himself from his addiction. His mind manipulated him, and the bottle enchained him. But now he’s free.
*
One night, after we’d showered and stopped at a local Thai restaurant, Sean and I ascended into the park to stargaze. We climbed to the highest point, near Double Arch, and stopped to snap sunset silhouettes.
The last rays of sunlight illuminated the red rocks before us, turning them shades of violet. The same horizon that once boasted an emblazoned sun now turned silver and, minute by minute, twilight descended. After our photo shoot, I leaned against the mokoro (the moniker we gave to Sean’s Ford Escape) and gazed at a black velvet sky where a sea of stars twinkled like diamonds.
I once read that the arches are windows to the universe. And they are. Head tilted and eyes fixed above, I entered a portal that suspended time and space. I wondered which of them was Jaji. After all, I thought, we are stardust. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. We all perish, but the stars remain. You don’t need to have been taught about God to know the Creator of the universe is an artist.
Sean and I stared at the same stars humans had peered at for millennia. We experience the same sorrow and the same joy as those who came before us. We ask the same questions, ponder the same unknowns, and arrive at the same conclusions. Yet there, under a gallery of galaxies and a string of stars, I found peace. Nature is a natural remedy. My mind felt sharper, my body stronger. To stay in that moment, forever, encircled by the stars and immersed in the stillness.
Jaji was there—walking in starlight—in another world. Distant but close. Unseen but seen. Imagined but real.
*
The months after Jaji died accelerated and decelerated, like a plane that climbs to smoother air but can’t escape the turbulence. I didn’t want July to become August or summer to roll into fall because the more time progressed, the more I feared my memory of him would recede.
Grief, I learned, is a ghost that visits without warning. It never knocks. Just intrudes and interrupts. We still go from laughing to sobbing in 60 seconds. Time doesn’t necessarily heal the wound; it only teaches us how to live with it.
Nineteen months later and I have no answers to the problem of pain. People often whisper well-intentioned clichés to me—that the bad memories will fade and to hold onto the good ones. But to hide the bad is to diminish the good. Repression doesn’t protect us; it just drives us further into fantasy. To experience true healing and help bring healing to others we must embrace all our memories and emotions as equals. Truth transforms our grief into growth.
“If we take joy from God’s hand, must we not also take sorrow?” Job lamented.
At first, I ran from grief, now I welcome it. Under the weight of sorrow, we can convince ourselves that joy is the enemy. But joy and sorrow, while difficult to reconcile, often go hand in hand. And even more, both the joy and the sorrow bring us closer to the heart of God.
“Do you think Dada still remembers us?” Ma once pondered.
“I know Jaji will never stop loving us, and I know we will never stop missing him,” I offered.
A tear rolled down her cheek—and then—a soft smile.
This is our truth, and this is our story. A chronicle of survivorship shared by thousands but told by few. Nostalgia for what was, gratitude for what remains, and hope for what is to come.
Alexander Mallory
Writer & Attorney
Alexander (Hakikóx Walu Piga—“makes his way”) is from the Winnebago Tribe of Nebraska and a Judicial Law Clerk at the U.S. District Court for the District of Arizona. He is a graduate of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and the Sandra Day O'Connor College of Law at Arizona State University. He and his father loved to fly.
Photography by Harrison Steen
