I was sitting on the couch he used to sit in. The one placed in the middle of the other two. It's right in front of the TV set. When I was younger I used to run over to him when he was on this couch watching the news and he would pick me up and put me in his lap. It's been a few years now since my father's passing, four to be exact. It's still been very difficult to adjust to not seeing his face or hearing his voice. My mother spends most of her days the same way. She'll take out one of her many cassette tapes, and put it in the cassette player in the radio, then she'll listen to songs that remind her of him. It hasn't been easy to watch her do this. Ultimately the hardest part of all of this is dealing with the void he left each one of us. Each of one us grieving in our own ways—but still grieving collectively. "Good afternoon Dad," I said. "Good afternoon Noah." He replied. We had almost bumped into each other in the hallway. I remember I had just got home and was headed to my bedroom. "You can pass." He stopped to give me way. "Thanks, Dad," I replied as I walked passed him with a smile. I got to the door which was open and as I turned to close it, I noticed he was walking with a limp. It looked like he was walking favouring one side of his body. I chose to ignore it because he had just said to me he was OK. I hadn't seen my father unwell too often so it was probably nothing too serious I thought to myself. In fact, I had only seen him cry one time in my entire life. When we had moved into the country, I remember asking my father why we were moving. He didn't give me a real reason at the time, but I learned later on that my Grandmother wasn't too well at that time and he wanted us to be a lot closer so we could take care of her. A few years later, she passed away—and that was probably the point when he started to spiral downwards, because I started to notice has wasn't OK after the turn of the year following my grandmother's passing.
Months went by and he got worse. The limping, gradually turned into the inability to walk at all. My father was deteriorating at an alarming rate and none of us were really prepared for it. "Noah!" She yelled. "Yes, Mother!" I screamed back.
"Come here, now!" She yelled again. I walked hurriedly to my parent's bedroom and knocked on the door before my Mother asked me to come inside. She had just prepared supper for my father and was laying it down on a table for him. "Your father would like to talk to you about something," She said. I was standing right in front of him so I just turned and faced him.
"Yes, Dad is everything OK?" I asked. He took a while to respond. He cleared his throat. "Why don't you come here to see me often?" He asked. With waves reverence running through my body, I had no real excuse to give him so I said nothing. I looked over to my Mother and back at him—still tongue-tied. "I know you're scared. So is your mother and so is Ely. I am too—but I don't want you to be afraid to come in here and see me whenever you want OK?" My chest was heavy at that point. My eyes, filled with tears that hadn't started to run down my cheeks yet. "—because the person who makes my days brighter is you, Noah. So don't be afraid to come in here and see me, OK?" And at that point, my heart sank and those tears I was holding back began to flow. I nodded in response and smiled really hard because I was happy to have heard him say that to me. "I love you Dad," I said to him as I hugged him. "I love you too." That conversation with my father was the last one we ever had. A few days later he lost his speech. A few more weeks after that he was hospitalised. I never got to see him while he was in the hospital—I was still only a child and I assume now that my mother didn't want me to remember him like that.
"I'm going home now," I said to my friends
"OK, Noah. See you at school." They responded collectively. I remember wondering why the gate was open when I got home. I got inside and found Ely, distraught, lying down on the couch with his head smothered into a cushion. "What's wrong? Did Mother yell at you?" He shook his head no. "Did she hit you?" Again he shook his head, no. "OK, What's wrong then?" I asked again. He turned his body and faced me. When his eyes met mine, the look in his eyes said it all. It was the kind of look that didn't need much explanation. The kind of look that brought me down to the floor with my eyes filled with tears. I almost foresaw the words which next, he then told me that our father had passed away that afternoon. I imagine those were the hardest words he had ever had to say to me—ever.
Five days later, while in the backseat of what was my father's Nissan Sentra. I replayed my last real conversation with him over and over right before I had to go inside the funeral home, to view his body, and asked myself repeatedly, "—could I have said more? I know I said I loved him back, right?" But hindsight is the worst kind of vision and regret—the worst kind of reminiscing.
YOU ARE READING
The Person Who Makes My Days Brighter
Short StoryThis is a collection of stories, focusing primarily on love in its many forms and the many challenges that come with it.
