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Not The only I had ever seen my Father cry was when the police showed up at our door. My Father had always been the quiet type and was never really known to show his emotions. His whole face turned bright tomato red, even his eyes, and his body slumped to the ground as he closed the door. It terrified me, I didn't know what was happening to him. I ran upstairs to my bed and hid under my covers so not to hear him screaming. I laid there for the rest of the night, waiting for Mom to come home to make it all better. Mom never did come home, and the screams only got louder.
My Mom was the love of his life, his everything. I had heard stories of how they met in college and he would always stare at her across the room dreaming up ways to get her to notice him. It might have been in the way he told those stories of them together, but to me it sounded just like a fairy tale. These memories would always bring just the slightest smile to his lips, a sight much akin to seeing a unicorn. I think that when he heard the news, it probably felt like having a piece of himself ripped out; a piece that he could never get back. He never told me this, of course, but he never quite seemed the same after that night.
As time went on, he stopped telling those stories and the face of the man that I thought could not show emotion has now turned completely blank. One by one, he took down all of the pictures of her in the house. I think that it was because the thought of living in a world without her was unbearable for him and seeing her smiling face was just another reminder of that. I could tell that my Father was hurting, but I was still too young to really understand. I had never so much as hugged my Father before, Mom had always taken care of that. Slowly, I was beginning to feel the warmth of our home fade away and there was nothing I knew how to do to bring it back.
It was a few years before my Father was able consider being with another woman. I began to see this one woman around more and more, even though I was never really formally introduced, and my Father was seen at home less and less. At the time it seemed like everything was happening all at once. When my Father offered to take me out to brunch one summer's morning, I knew that something big was coming. If there was ever something important that my Father had to tell me, he would always do it over brunch. Sure enough, I was right and two weeks later the mysterious woman would be moving in.
Her name was Ms Fletcher. She was a very thin woman, in fact I think that I had pencils that were thicker than her. Her clothes were nicely tailored and even in the earliest mornings she would always look put together. Where my Father seemed to lack emotion, she seemed to have too much. It was almost unnerving. Once again, I found that the air in the house had changed. I wouldn't say that her and I never got along, but I found that I was never quite able to get used to her presence. Despite this, I truly hoped that she was helping my Father feel better again. It was impossible to tell just by looking at him.
My Mom was never brought up ever in the house again, though I still thought of her every day. I was never able to find those old pictures of her that my Father had hid, though I once found the corner of what looked like a photograph sticking out from the ash of the wood stove. As I would lay awake at night, trying to remember all of those happy times, it would feel as though her face was becoming blurrier and blurrier until one day it struck me that I could no longer remember what she looked like. That terrified me more than anything.
Time went on and I felt my Mom slip further away from my mind. My body was beginning to do strange things. I didn't know what was happening and I wasn't sure who do go to for help. I thought to ask Ms Fletcher, who had since taken on my Father's name, but I had still not yet felt close enough to her. I definitely could not ask my Father, that was for certain. It was around this time that I noticed that he would no longer look me in the eye. I wanted to ask him what was wrong, but I had never been good with that sort of thing with him. I ended up getting all the information I needed from the books in the library, all the while a terrible loneliness crept inside my mind.
I had always known my Father to be quiet, perhaps that's why it had taken so long to realize that he would no longer speak with me. Over dinner he would bury his face in his paper while I would attempt to tell him about my day. Eventually I just stopped talking all together. Ms Fletcher would smile at me, but in her eyes I could see that she was uncomfortable at how quiet the house had become.
The first time my Father spoke to me in three years was the day I was told to leave. It had actually been Ms Fletcher who had broken the news to me. Her jaw trembled as she spoke and I knew that it had not been her decision. She held me in her arms, but the feeling felt foreign and strange. She was a kind woman, but I didn't realize it at the time. When I had finished packing up all my things and my Grandma had come to pick me up, I found myself unable to even look my Father in eye. He stood silently in the foyer, his eyes fixed on the hardwood floor. It was only as I was closing the door behind me that I was able to make out the faintest whisper of his voice.
"I'm sorry."
That night, I cried. I wasn't sure how long it had been since I had last cried. I wanted to curse myself for being so weak, but the tears kept on coming. When I finally able to wipe the last of it from my cheeks, I caught my reflection in the bathroom mirror. I saw a face staring back at me that I had not seen in a very long time, that I thought I had completely forgotten. It was just like all of those pictures, the last one that he couldn't burn.
Credit to; Fiftytwobadstories on tumblr :)
