My father spent the last 25 years of his life in Alamogordo, New Mexico. This is where the Air Force tested Trinity, the first atomic bomb, on July 16, 1945. It exploded in a billowing mushroom cloud above the high desert town, bathing residents in toxic radiation and instantly turning the world into a more dangerous place. July 16 also happened to be Dad’s birthday. It seemed fitting that my father— quirky, restless, haunted by more than a few regrets—ended up in this harsh, isolated corner of New Mexico with its notorious past.

As a child, drifting off to sleep to the soothing flamenco music he coaxed from his guitar made me feel safe. By my early teens, the sounds I associated with my father fueled my hatred of him: the jarring stop-and-start screech of car brakes jolting me awake in the middle of the night as he inched his way home from another bender. The buzz-saw whine of slurred accusations hurled at my mother, growing louder, angrier. The slap of his hand against her face. Her whimper. The front door slamming as he lurched into the night.

After years of enduring his alcohol-fueled rages and depression, Mom finally divorced him when I was a senior in high school. He left our large home in a pleasant middle-class San Diego neighborhood for a little apartment in a non-descript complex in a cheaper part of town.

Our birthdays were only four days apart —Dad always insisted I was just like him. That was the last thing I wanted to hear. Maybe because deep inside, I knew there was truth to his claim. Like my father, I could be thin-skinned and irritable. And at 18, I was well on my way to becoming an alcoholic. Though he embarrassed me and I despised the way he’d treated my mother, I moved in with him. It wasn’t like I had anywhere else to go. Mom sold the family home and bought a new one with the man she’d eventually marry. Instead of heading off to college like my friends, I became a full-time waitress, a job that didn’t interfere with my drinking the way studying would.  There were two upsides to living with Dad: He didn’t charge me rent. And he’d buy me booze.

What I remember most from that period are the nights I’d return to the apartment after partying and find him sitting in the dark in his leather Lazy Boy recliner, shrouded by a haze of cigarette smoke and drinking.

“I’ll tell you what I’m gonna do,” he’d slur, swirling the ice cubes in his tumbler of Scotch. “I’m gonna get a machine gun and blow that bitch and her boyfriend away.”

When he wasn’t plotting revenge on my mother, he was threatening to kill himself. Sometimes, I wished he’d just shut up and do it already. I couldn’t handle the bombs he kept dropping on me and moved out eight months after I moved in.

Soon after, my father checked himself into a mental hospital. He got sober a few years later and made amends to me and my three siblings. He took up ballroom dancing, bought a nice condo and found himself a lovely girlfriend. He was happier than I’d ever seen him. When I finally confronted my own drinking problem in my mid-twenties, my father took me to my first AA meeting. My hatred towards him slowly evaporated along with my craving for alcohol. With sobriety, I began to see that however awkwardly he might show it, he loved me and was doing his best to make up for the past.

But Dad was always the kind of person who believed the grass was greener somewhere else. So just as we were starting to get closer, he sold his condo, dumped the girlfriend and moved, eventually settling in Alamogordo where he purchased a small adobe with cracked walls and a roof that sagged. That didn’t stop him from boasting during our infrequent phone calls about what a bargain he’d scored compared to my home in the pricey Bay Area. Yeah, Dad, I’d think to myself as he cackled on the other end of the line. That’s because it’s a dump in fricking Alamogordo.

I only visited him there twice. Perhaps his neighborhood had once possessed charm. But those days were long gone by the time my dad arrived. The war zone vibe of his street made me sad: houses with barren dirt yards and boarded up windows, piles of trash and carcasses of rusted cars rotting in driveways. A network of strip malls and fast-food restaurants dominated the rest of the town. I couldn’t escape Alamogordo fast enough. I wondered how my father handled living there.

Besides being cheap and warm, Alamogordo appealed to him because his sister Pinky lived nearby in the mountain hamlet of Cloudcroft. They were close, but Pinky had chronic health problems and wasn’t always up for socializing. And though my father’s bouts of depression weren’t as frequent as they used to be, they could still ambush him, holding him hostage for days or weeks.

I worried he was lonely. I fretted about him being so far away, especially when, in his early eighties, he developed heart problems. What if he had a heart attack or stroke and died all alone?

One day, Pinky called. “Your dad’s in the hospital,” she said. “He almost bled to death.”

I called my father the next day. He admitted he’d been drinking for months, desperate for relief from a debilitating spell of depression. I knew he’d been struggling but had no idea things had gotten so bad. I also knew he wasn’t a fan of the handful of AA meetings in Alamogordo.

“It’s always the same three losers bitching about the same shit,” he spat at me the last time I broached the subject.

I told him I wanted to come see him. Dad was adamant that I shouldn’t. He didn’t say it, but I suspected he was ashamed for me to see him in a hospital bed, weak and stitched back together like a worn-out rag doll.

Like many parts of my father’s life, how he almost died that day remains a mystery. Pinky and her son Buddy found him passed out on the living room floor. Or maybe it was in the bathtub, gashes in his arm staining the water the color of Rosé wine. The details were murky and changed depending on who was telling the story. Dad was in a blackout —at least that’s what he claimed—but speculated that he’d been attacked by burglars. Yet nothing appeared to be missing from his home. And he didn’t own much worth stealing. Pinky thought he’d crashed into his media console in his drunken stupor since it was knocked over. Buddy’s story about the bathtub suggested he’d finally followed through on his threats of suicide. Both my aunt and cousin passed away before I had a chance to dig deeper.

What I do know is that once my father’s wounds healed, he went back to those AA meetings he hated and the weekly rec center dances he loved. I know he won first place in Alamogordo’s annual senior talent show because he mailed me a newspaper clipping with a photo of him grinning and holding his guitar. And I know that on a summer evening a few weeks before his eighty-seventh birthday, he suffered an aortic aneurism while whooping it up at a family reunion in San Diego. I rode with him in the ambulance and held his hand. My siblings and daughter rushed to meet us at the hospital. Even my mother, who he’d apologized to and become good enough friends with to finagle a Thanksgiving invite a few years earlier, was there.  Together, we formed a protective circle around my father. We smoothed his hair, stroked his face and hands. We told him we loved him. He died a half hour later.

The morning after his death, I scrolled through his phone contacts, hoping I’d spot  a familiar name. My siblings and I needed to go to Alamogordo to clean out his house. We wanted to hold a service for our father while we were there. I realized, as my eyes skimmed the names of strangers, how little I actually knew about his life in Alamogordo. Pinky was gone. Did he have any real friends? And if he did, how would I get in touch with them? Where would we hold his service? My father wasn’t religious. He would have despised a traditional funeral.

Dad was always coy about his personal life. He told me some local women had helped him out when he was recovering from his blackout injuries. Whether he paid them for this or they were friends was unclear. He’d also casually mentioned several ladies he enjoyed dancing with. But I couldn’t recall their names. As far as I knew, these relationships were limited to the rec center dance floor. Then I remembered him telling me about a group of Buddhists he sometimes played music for, usually at the home of a woman with a Japanese name. Suddenly, it jumped out at me from his contacts—Sachiko!

I dialed her number and when she answered explained who I was. I told her my father had died. She let out a soft gasp.

“We loved Earl,” she said. “He was one of us.”

According to Sachiko, Dad didn’t just provide musical entertainment for the group. He was a practicing Buddhist. I was stunned. The image of my cynical father chanting to an altar and seeking a state of Zen did not compute. Sachiko offered her home to hold a Buddhist service for him. Overwhelmed with gratitude, I said yes. I couldn’t think of a more fitting send off for my father than a Buddhist ceremony in the birthplace of the atomic bomb.

#####

Upon arriving in Alamogordo a few months later, I met another of my father’s secrets: his girlfriend Delia. She wasn’t a Buddhist, but Sachiko had mentioned her when we spoke. Delia claimed she was more than Dad’s girlfriend. She was his fiancé. They’d been living together and planned to marry.

The morning of the service, I woke before dawn and went for a run to clear my head. Trotting up the street from our hotel, I passed a few houses, then found myself in open space dotted with scruffy shrubs and cactus. Driving through this spot in broad daylight the previous afternoon, all I could focus on was the half-dead vegetation; the scraps of trash clinging to branches and scooting across the ground.  With those blemishes hidden, the place had an eerie beauty. Silhouetted against the slowly brightening sky, a cluster of prickly saguaro cactus stretched their arms towards the heavens like a troupe of dancers. In the distance, the mountains I’d barely noticed until now undulated in soft layers of purple and midnight blue, the sky behind them streaked pink and orange as the sun began to rise.  For the first time, I didn’t feel sad thinking about my father living in this odd desert town.

Back at the hotel, I showered and ate breakfast with my family. Then we picked up Delia and drove to Sachiko’s house, an older Ranch-style tract home with avocado shag carpet and dark wood paneling. Sachiko and the other Buddhists were kind and welcoming. Rows of folding chairs filled the cluttered living room. An oriental cabinet with a shrine to my father stood in one corner. There was a photo of him, young and handsome in his Army uniform; a bowl of fruit; a silver harmonica case; and a porcelain box painted with flowers.

“We called this Earl’s Corner,” Sachiko said as I gazed at the shrine. “It’s where he played music and danced after our meetings.”

The service began with a special prayer chant. The rhythmic repetition of words vibrated in the stuffy air like a heartbeat, surreal yet comforting. After the chanting, people shared memories of my dad.

“Earl complained about all the chanting,” said Sachiko. “He was in a hurry to get to the food and music.” Chuckles floated through the room.

A man described my father’s generosity: “He loaned me money and gave me his bike.”

Another woman rose from her chair. She said she ran into my dad after not seeing him for a while and asked why he hadn’t been at meetings.

“I don’t need them anymore,” he quipped. “The chanting worked—I  got a girlfriend!”

Everyone laughed; Delia blushed.

Later, I returned to my father’s shrine. I pictured him holding court in his corner, strumming his guitar and singing. Or deftly guiding a dance partner in small, smooth circles, his moves graceful as a cat’s. I studied his photo, seeing my own face in his. I thought about how we’d both escaped the fallout of our self-destructive ways. And how even though we’d landed in very different places, one wasn’t necessarily better than the other.  My father’s time in Alamogordo was more than the bleak existence I’d imagined. He’d found life in the desert. He’d found a home.

Dorothy O’Donnell is a writer based in San Francisco. Her articles and essays have been published by the Los Angeles Times, Great Schools, Scary Mommy, Salon and other outlets. She is working on a memoir about raising a young child diagnosed with early onset bipolar disorder.