I grimaced at my reflection in the bathroom mirror. The black velveteen dress smothered my pudgy belly and the tight sleeves nearly cut off the circulation to my plump pale arms. My bangs were the shape of a large-barreled curling iron and the rest of my hair was pulled into a curly pony tail. My entire head was protected by thick White Rain hairspray that was made to withstand the winds that sent Dorothy to Oz.

My mother exited the bathroom stall and washed her hands. I’m sure she asked how I was holding up. I’m sure I lied and said I was fine. I’m sure I told her I was hungry. And I’m sure it took us nearly three minutes to figure out how to get out of the restaurant’s bathroom without touching the door handle.

I don’t remember the name of that restaurant from 28 years ago, but I can still see it clearly in my mind. I can picture walking from the bathroom to the back of a dimly lit room where my family was gathered at a long table. I remember taking the seat next to my mother and admiring crisp white linens folded into some fancy shape.

I probably ordered chicken fingers or a cheeseburger, but I’m not certain what I was eating. What I was eating wasn’t as important as what I wasn’t eating. I wasn’t eating the traditional Thanksgiving meal that I’d devoured every November for the first eleven years of my life- baked ham, my mother’s delicious broccoli and cheese casserole, homemade mashed potatoes and cold cranberries indented with lines from the can.

We picked at our food and refrained from talking about thankfulness. My grandmother talked loudly about something or another she was crocheting down at the Senior Center. My brother cracked jokes. My sister quietly laughed at them. My mama drank her sweet tea and shifted in her chair and said the sweet potatoes were good. She occasionally reached over and patted my fat velveteen-painted arm to let me know that all was okay.

I was ready to go as soon as my plate was clean. I wanted to leave the elegant restaurant, remove the uncomfortable dress, brush the crusted White Rain helmet from my head and go to sleep. I wanted Thanksgiving 1992 to be over.

Sprawled across the backseat of my mother’s Oldsmobile Ninety-Eight, we drove home from the restaurant, and I pretended to sleep as she and my grandmother talked quietly in the front. I heard Granny sniffle and then rustle around in her large purse for a wad of Kleenex. I barely opened my eyes to see the dashboard illuminating my mother giving her familiar and consoling pat to Granny’s shoulder pads.

I squeezed my eyes closed again and prayed that all of this would go away. I prayed that all of it was some horrible nightmare that would end. I prayed that my daddy wasn’t really six feet in the ground on a cold hill beside the Methodist Church. I wanted him to be alive and well at our dining table, slopping up the juice from his carrots with a crescent roll. As my eyes were squeezed tightly in that plush back seat, I prayed, but my mind continued to replay the events from four days earlier.

Sunday, November 22, 1992. Mama was at the church playing piano. I had recently seen E.T. and learned how to put a thermometer to a light bulb and fake sickness so I could stay home from church and watch It’s a Wonderful Life. George Bailey was running through the streets like a madman when I heard Daddy coming in the kitchen door. His golf game must have ended early.

I looked away from the television and prepared to explain to my father why I wasn’t at church with Mama, but he stopped in front of me and gripped his chest and moaned in pain. He collapsed to the stupid blue carpet and I knew right away what was happening.

The old folks at church always described a heart attack like “an elephant sitting on your chest.” I knew this had to be a heart attack, but it just didn’t seem right. My father was in his early forties, tall and skinny as a rail, and heart attacks were for grandfathers and people who ate meat for dessert.

I rushed to the telephone in my bedroom and called 911 just as I’d been instructed to do throughout my elementary school years when someone needed help. I told them my father was sick, and then I called the church and left a message with an old lady that my mama should come home immediately.

When I hung up the phone and walked back to the hallway, I saw my dog lying next to my motionless father on that stupid blue carpet, and it was evident that she knew. I knew, too, but I just couldn’t accept it yet.

I scooped the Lhasa Apso puppy into my arms, stepped over my daddy, and I rushed outside to get away from the death and the image of my still father.   The dog and sat inside my daddy’s Chevrolet truck parked in the driveway, next to his golf clubs, his crumpled pack of cigarettes, his Beatles cassette tapes, and we waited on the ambulance.

The paramedics finally arrived, followed by my mother and her best friend, and I stayed frozen inside the truck. I soon saw several men wheeling him down our driveway on a stretcher. My mother jumped into the ambulance, and her best friend stayed behind with me.

I removed myself from the frigid truck and went inside to sit on our ugly floral couch with my dog and my mother’s friend as “Sister Act” played quietly on the television. My eyes kept leaving Whoopi Goldberg and her singing nuns to gawk at all of the paramedic’s equipment on the floor, next to the indention of my father’s thin body on that stupid blue carpet.

Mama was surely going to call to say something mundane had been the cause of my father’s collapse. I prayed it was just indigestion. Or a hangover.  Something simple. Something curable.  I waited on my dad to walk through the door and apologize for scaring me.

Instead, an EMT walked through our white door, without knocking. He was tall and heavy and bald, dressed in his navy paramedic uniform. He informed us that he was back to get the resuscitating equipment. My mom’s friend asked how my daddy was doing, and I studied his face and waited for good news. But, as casually as saying, “Today is Sunday”, the bald man replied, “He didn’t make it.” I immediately wondered if that man, whose face I knew I would always remember, realized the weight of the news he delivered.

After that depressing Thanksgiving meal in some restaurant, Mama and I dropped my grandmother off at her house , and I moved to the front seat of the car. I tugged at the tight dress and looked out the window to the dark streets damp from an earlier rain.

“The food wasn’t so bad,” Mama drove through the sleepy town that somehow seemed so different and unfamiliar from the place that I’d always called home.

“It was okay,” I shrugged.

She reached over and patted my shoulder.

“Daddy would’ve liked the sweet potatoes.”