The unique way this collection is written is that the meaning and the story changes based on perspective. The overarching theme is the story about love, loss, reconciliation between a father and son. The interpretation of the story changes based on whether you read it as the Son being the narrator or the Father.
I stand there beside him. The cold metal bar restricting me to the threshold of the bed. The antiseptic smell catches me in my throat – sharp, clean, unforgiving mixed with life and death. Like truth. Like memory.
He is older now, so am I. The years had carved valleys between us. Regret running deep, silence running wide. Yet something remains between us. Something that beats beneath the hurt like a second heart.
The steady rhythm of the monitor counts the time between beats, between breaths, between unspoken words. I close my eyes just for a second but I get transported to another time, another room. It felt like it was just yesterday, maybe it was. The day everything changed. She was there, and then she wasn’t.
She loved you.
The words hang there heavy with different meaning. A death that stole her or a choice that took her away. Did it even matter now in the end?
You took her from me.
The bitter response cut through the silence like a whip. But which one of us speaks? The one who lost the love of his life to death’s cruel timing or the one who lost her to choices he couldn’t understand?
The memory blurs. Like rain on glass. Watching him now in this sterile light I see what I couldn’t before. Grief coursed between generations like blood through vein. Love and loss wearing the same face.
He looks at me with uncertainty. I know that look. I’ve worn it far too many times. Seen it too frequently in the mirror. Maybe it was passed down or maybe it was inherited, depending on where you stand in time. The weight of unspoken truths hangs between us.
But this time I step forward. The linoleum squeaks beneath my feet. Such a mundane sound for such a profound moment. No grand speeches, no perfect explanations. Just the quiet acknowledgement that pain, no matter the source, bleeds the same.
I see her in you
I whispered in a moment of weakness. A curse? A blessing? Perhaps both, perhaps neither.
His hand finds mine—small in large or large in small, father to son or son to father, the roles blur like watercolors in rain. I feel the pulse there, the thread of life that connects us despite everything, because of everything. Through the window, dawn paints the sky in shades of beginning or ending. In this light, I see us both clearly: father and son, son and father, each carrying half of a story that was never just ours to tell.
I love you.
The words come easier now, when time has softened their edges. When understanding has made them true in a way they couldn’t be before.
Is this a beginning or an ending? A first breath or a last one? Perhaps it’s both. Perhaps it’s always been both.
Continue Reading – Thank You
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