Disappearing Fathers by Faith Shearin

Sometime after I turned forty the fathers from my childhood began disappearing; they had heart attacks during business dinners or while digging their shovels into a late April snow. Some fathers began forgetting things: their phone numbers, which neighborhoods belonged to them, which houses. They had a shortness of breath, the world’s air suddenly too thin, as if it came from some other altitude. They were gone: the fathers I had seen dissecting cars in garages, the fathers with suits and briefcases, the fathers who slipped down rivers on fishing boats and the ones who drank television and beer. Most of my friends still had mothers but the fathers were endangered, then extinct. I was surprised, though I had always known the ladies lasted longer; the fathers fooled me with their toughness; I had been duped by their jogging and heavy lifting, misled by their strength when they slapped me on the back or shook my hand. I kept imagining I would see them again: out walking their dogs on the roads near my childhood house, lighting cigars on their porches, waving to me from their canoes while I waited on shore.