The Lonely Moon

Reunion

I woke early in the morning so that I could see Sarah off to school and afterwards, I got ready and started making my way to the graveyard. When I got there, I was surprised to see that the gate was already open. As I went in I saw my dad and grandpa standing side by side at Julie's grave. I approached them and said, "I guess we all had the same plan today." my dad and grandpa looked around at me and my dad said, " Hey John, I just thought it had been awhile since I've been here so I thought I would come. Your grandpa was already here when I showed up. He had some harsh words for me, but we've made up." Grandpa, with a smile on his face said, " Well I only have you and John now, so I wasn't going to be an old grump." I speak up at that point and ask, " Have either of you told Julie the news?" They look back down at the grave and say, "No." I said, "Well let me do it. Hey Julie, its been awhile since all three of us where here. I hope wherever you are, that mom is there by your side, we lost here Julie, but the good news is that gramps and dad are back to getting along and dad has finally come back to me. I've also found someone who can look at my scars and my darkness and say she loves all of me." Having said everything I wanted to say, I place the flowers on here grave and step back. Grandpa and dad put there arms around me shoulder and dad says," I'm sure she would have liked to hear that from you, I have some things of my own to say, but I'll wait till it's just me and her." I stay for a little while longer talking to dad and grandpa, but before long grandpa leaves saying he needed to go open the diner. After he left, dad put his hand on my shoulder and said,"I've finished all my business left to do, so after the funeral I'll be moving into a little one person house in the next town over, so that I can still visit you, Julie and your mother every now and then." I look up at him and say, "You're welcome to come over anytime, I'll wait for you to finish saying what you want at the front gate, I'm going to show you my new home and introduce you to my girlfriend." He looked surprised, but then nodded his head, so I waited for home at the front gate. I closed and locked it and we started making our way back. When we got back to the house, Sarah was already home from school and greeted us at the door. She introduced herself to my dad saying,"It's good to meet you, I'm Sarah, Johns girlfriend." My dad replies while scratching his head, "I'm his dad, even if I've done some things that made me not be such a great father." We sit down at the dining table and I say to my dad, "That doesn't matter to me anymore dad, I'm just glad to have you back. I'll be right back, I'm going to grab a change of clothes." With that I left the room and when I came back down, I could hear them talking. My dad said, "Sarah, you said your name was?" "Yes." replied Sarah. My dad shifts his sitting position and says, "I really am glad that he found someone who can look at him for who he is and not what he looks like, I don't know if he ever told you this, but about a year after the incident, kids at his school started finding out that something was off about him besides his looks. He would come home from school every day, covered in bruises and markings where the other kids had beaten him." Sarah gasped and said, "Why didn't the school do anything about it?" "The school already knew the full situation and they didn't like him anymore then the kids did, its just that they couldn't directly show their disgust towards him. Until his current school, he has always been outcast  by his peers and the ones above him. I regret it now, but I never tried to help, in fact I just made it worse by doing the same thing to him at home, but he never seemed to care about any of it. He always had the same distant look in his eyes like he wasn't alive." At this I walked around the corner and when and sat over on the couch and said to my dad in a voice full of pain and sadness, "So, you decided to tell her about that did you?" My dad and Sarah looked over in surprise and my dad said, "Yes because if I didn't you probably would have never told her yourself." Sarah gets up from the table and sits down next to me asking, "You alright?" I put on a sad smile and say with a quiet voice, "No, I'm not, those memories aren't ones I like to be reminded about, but I understand why you told her dad, so it's okay, don't feel bad about it. It became so normal for all that to happen that I got used to it, to the point where I started losing all emotion and feeling." I stand up and go to the kitchen to get a glass of water saying to my dad, "Those times were hard, but I had come to the conclusion that I deserved the mistreatment, so I just stayed quiet and took it, until it broke my will to exist. That distant glazed over look in my eye was proof that I had quit." My dad turned his head down in shame, not able to look into the eye of the son that caused so much pain. He gets up saying, "Well, I think I'll be on my way, I'll see you again at the funeral. Are you going to go Sarah?" "Yes" she replied. My dad heads towards the door and says without looking back, "Well then I'll see you two there." Then he left and it was just me in the kitchen leaning over the sink and Sarah standing behind the counter watching me. Sarah embraced me from behind and said, "It's okay if you need to cry, it's just me and you now." Hearing that, I let all the tension go in my body and just let it out, till I had no more tears to cry. As Sarah cradled me in her arms, she lead me upstairs and put me in the bed and laid down next to me and started humming, calming me down. Before I fell asleep I told her, "I'm not going to school tomorrow." She just nodded and we went to sleep.