*Death *Substance Abuse *Motor Vehicle Accident *Other sad stuff
Author's Notes:
For at least a year after my mom passed away, I experience extremely vivid nightmares regularly.
These nightmares were always scenarios revolving around my mom being in danger and me always to late to save her.
In a way, that's where my idea for the story came from.
Extra Stuff:
My mother was about four months pregnant with me when my father passed away from a stroke. She has been experiencing quite a bit of work-related stress and didn't even realise that she was pregnant until she fainted during my father's funeral and Aunt Nadia insisted on taking her to the emergency room.
Aunt Nadia stayed to help Mom until three months after my very complicated birth. Mostly she kept Oliver company while Mom spent most of her time in her room, sleeping and crying.
On the day of my father's passing, Oliver was found roaming the neighborhood. The kind man who found him, followed Oliver back to my parent's house. He knocked a few times and then peeked through the window, that's when when he saw my father laying face-down on the carpet and called emergency services. They were too late to do anything.
Mom wasn't a terrible mother, but she was emotionally absent most of my childhood. She would alternate between telling me all about my father and just sitting on her bed, staring at a photograph of their wedding. She blamed herself for not being there. Soon she became dependant on prescription medications and alcohol. Aunt Nadia came over often to help but that happened less and less as I got older. Mom went through a string of relationships with a few nice men and quite a few not so nice ones. I became nothing more than an obligation to her.
Two weeks after my seventeenth birthday, Mom was coming home from somewhere when she drove her car off a bridge. Aunt Nadia took me in and I lived with her for some time before going off to college. College didn't go all too well and soon I was back at Aunt Nadia's. She never questioned or judged when I arrived at her door with my luggage in hand.
I got married to a woman and had two kids. I tried, I really did. However, I grew up angry and bitter. I was a bitter and angry man, I wasn't a good father. It wasn't long before Caroline couldn't stand it anymore and left with the kids.
After Aunt Nadia passed away; I resorted to self-medicating with alcohol and over-the-counter pain meds, much like my mother did. My life was never a happy one and yes, I resented my father. Somehow blaming the man who died of a stroke.
I never remarried, I became reclusive. Waiting for my end, I lived my life alone. I passed away at the age of 75. An old, angry and mentally ill man holding on to one thought. If only I could have saved my father all those years ago... maybe, my life would have been better and I could go in peace.
*****
(Not part of the Prompt contest.)
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