The Time of My Life by Patrick Swayze, Lisa Niemi

favorite beer, Budweiser. I hated the taste, but I popped open can after can, trying to get myself drunk. No matter how much I drank, I couldn’t feel anything. So I kept drinking.
    My dad’s death was devastating for many reasons. For one thing, it just about killed my mother, who had loved and depended on him for all those years. She was crushed, and felt angry and alone without the man who’d always been there to support her. My mother is a strong woman, but her emotions run strong, too. And losing him nearly put her over the edge with grief. My brothers and sisters were devastated, too, especially Donny and Sean. Losing a parent is hard. But losing a father who was the embodiment of what you want to become as a man is crushing.
    For me, my father’s death meant my very identity had changed. My whole life, he’d been Big Buddy and I was Little Buddy. But now that he was gone, I’d have to be the Big Buddy—I was the oldest male in the family, and now I had to step up and be a man. This marked a new level of responsibility, and it started right away. Lisa and I had to plan my father’s funeral and take care of all the details leading up to it. This was difficult enough, but there was one truly horrible moment that showed me just how strong I’d need to be.
    It happened just before the viewing at the funeral home. I went down before the rest of the family arrived, to make sure the undertakers had prepared his body and everything was set. But when I looked in the casket, I was shocked. The man lying there looked nothing like my father—they had put too much blush makeup on his otherwise pale face, and his normally wavy hair was straight and stiff. He looked like a clown, I thought, as rage rose in my chest. And I knew it would kill my mother to see him this way.
    “Take him back there,” I said to the undertaker, my voice tight. “I’ll do his makeup myself.”
    And in the back room of that funeral home, I gently wiped my dad’s face while the tears streamed down my own. I desperately wanted to make him look like my dad again, but I just couldn’t get it—until finally, after a few fits and starts, I got the makeup right and managed to fix his hair the way he always wore it. When I was finished, I wiped the tears from my eyes and took him back out for the viewing. It was the hardest thing I’d ever done.
    We buried my father in a simple wood casket rather than a fancy hermetically sealed one, as it just seemed right to let nature take its course, from dust to dust. I don’t remember muchabout the funeral, but I remember wanting to carve his initials into the casket just before we lowered it into the ground. I didn’t end up doing it, and regretted it. He’d always carried an Old Timer knife, and I did, too—it was part of our identities as Swayze men. But when that last moment came, I just watched as the casket was lowered, and then we threw dirt over it, and he was gone.
    In the months after my dad died, I began drinking like I’d never done before. I was trying to get drunk, but I never could feel it. In some strange way, I felt like I was honoring my dad, by doing something he loved to do—drinking beer. Like many men of his era in Texas, my father drank a lot, probably too much. And in some ways, I think I was trying to see how much like him I really was.
    One thing about being a Swayze is, you never do anything halfway. Lisa was concerned about how much I was drinking, but I didn’t want to stop. Late at night, I’d take my DeLorean up to Mulholland Drive—the twisting, steep part through the Hollywood Hills where car aficionados would come to race. I’d put a case of beer on the seat beside me and go, taking on any and all comers to do suicide runs up and down Mulholland. I never got into an accident, maybe because I never felt as impaired by the alcohol as I probably was. But all the same, it wasn’t safe or smart, and Lisa was understandably worried about me.
    In all my life, I never drank