“Your grandfather would be so disappointed in you. Wasting everything he did for you to throw your influence away when it can benefit others.” He carries on and I tune out, staring out of the window into the street where passers-by head out on their lunch breaks.
The silence is there before I notice it.
“I’m sorry if you didn’t receive your father’s money and it was left to me instead.” I stand up and stretch, reaching to my full height which is a shade taller than him.
The man who claims half my DNA stares at me. He’d hit me if he didn’t think I’d hit back and I’m worth more to him alive than any other state.
“It isn’t about that.”
“Then what is it about? Or is this just you not getting your own way?”
He doesn’t answer and I decide now’s a good time to leave before I say something I really mean.
Blair
It’s sudden when it happens. The daylight pours in through the windows and we’re sitting around what’s become known as the day room, the space the nurses wheel my father into each morning so he has a change of scenery. It faces south on one side so takes in the light, while the other windows overlook the loch and although he can no longer see the waters or the mountains because we know his vision has failed, it’s something to know they are there.
We’re in the day room; myself, mother, my mother’s brother and his wife and we’re talking about summer, where we’ll go this year, who with, what we’ll do. It’s bittersweet because we’re talking about a future that my father will never have.
My mother sits beside him, holding his hand like she does every day, the books she’s reading still marked on the same page because we all know she can’t read a word, not when her heart is tied elsewhere.
There’s birdsong. An announcement of impending spring. A flutter of wings outside the window and sunlight finally cracks through the duvet of clouds that’s hung above us for what feels like forever.
None of us notice he slips away.
He’s sleeping, like he does so much. His expression is peaceful and his head tipped to one side. My mother talks to him like she does so often, keeping him involved in a conversation he’ll care nothing about because he can’t hear us and hasn’t done for days.
Death isn’t dignified.
It’s either too sudden, like Lennox, where there are no opportunities for goodbyes because there aren’t meant to be any. Or it’s prolonged and agonising because you never quite know when to say your final I love yous and feel like you say them too often, just in case, and then they sound false.
I said my I love yous.
I held his hand and tried not to cry and then I cried and wished for more of the yesterdays before we got to today.
I contemplated a world where my father wasn’t there and it was unimaginable.
My mother held his hand while we laughed and talked and smiled and all pretended that this was just another day where no one was going to die.
Only today they did.
She looks at my father, a long lingering look. An appraising glance only this time she doesn’t correct the knot of his tie or straighten his jacket like I remember from that look.
She leans over and kisses his forehead, whispering something that none of us can hear even though we’ve all stopped talking because something that was in the room is no longer there.
We are lighter. We are less.
I am missing a piece.
She looks at me with dry eyes and I see every ounce of regality as she stands up and looks at me.
“I need to get the doctor.”
I stare at my aunt and uncle in shock, not knowing what to say because I haven’t lost a parent before and they haven’t lost a sibling and lost makes it sound like we can find them again.
But we can’t find him again because my father has died and we didn’t see. We weren’t there to catch him as he slipped away; we didn’t realise. We were too lost in our false laughter and the plans that will probably never happen because the world just ended.
My mother returns with the doctor who speaks words in hushed tones that I can’t hear because I’m too fixed on what is my father’s body lying on the bed.
