The Good Son

My Father is Dying

"Buenos dias, my young explorers!" I said to my class of special education children. "Now, who wants to learn and have fun?"

Being a teacher can be such a hard task, and doubly so for a special needs teacher. But this is where my passion lies. Children with special needs are so misunderstood, especially in our current time, but all it takes is for someone to give them the love, care and attention that they need and they can become the most wonderful and fascinating people ever. That was why I chose to take special needs education as my degree when I moved to America, and why I applied to the special needs school for my first ever job.

I still remember the day when I first met a special needs child in my country, and how he was basically left to fend for himself because he did not, could not conform to the educational standards of my country, which claims a 99 percent literacy rate but only because it has been very careful in hiding its illiterates from the rest of the world. I also remember the day when one of my teachers had simply had enough of this special needs kid so he took off his own belt and began whipping the boy, who was either autistic or afflicted with ADHD, because he simply would not pay attention to the teacher or his lesson. I saw the tears in the boy's face as he was being whipped, and I knew that it was because he had no idea why he was being punished. I had been powerless then, but now I was no longer the hapless child who couldn't have lifted a finger to save that boy from punishment. That was the day that I decided that I would dedicate my whole life to helping children with special needs, to make sure that they did not and would not get ostracized simply because they were different from their classmates. I would not let them suffer like the way that that boy in my childhood had suffered.

Of course, helping out these children wasn't all fun and games. Sometimes they would punch, scratch or even bite their caretakers if they didn't want to be interrupted from whatever it was that they were doing. But it was all part of the job, and I knew that the key to establishing a rapport with these kids was patience. I was in my element, and I was happy. Little did I know that this was actually my last day as a free man, and that the past that I had tried to run away from my whole adult life has now come back to reclaim me.

It was eleven in the morning when my old life came back to haunt me. I was near one of the windows in the playroom watching and helping this boy with Down syndrome build a tower and fort with wooden blocks when I saw two black vehicles, one sedan and one SUV, pulling up to the curb in front of the school. Both vehicles had flags with yellow, green, blue and red stripes flying on their hoods, which was how I knew that they had come for me. Confirmation of this came from Rachel, one of my fellow teachers in the school, when she went into the playroom, walked up to me and said, "Max, some people from the Margovian consulate are here to see you. What's that all about?" she asked.

"It's nothing," I shrugged. "They're just checking up on a fellow countryman. Let me talk to them for a sec, tell them that I'm all right, so cover for me with Mrs. Bitterman, please?" I walked out of the playroom and towards the two consular security officers with their black shades and rubberized earpieces. They led me to the back of the SUV, where I found myself sitting beside none other than the Consul of the Republic of Margovia to the United States of America in Los Angeles, a plump and portly man who despite being already in his early eighties still had a full head of dark brown hair on his head. "Look, whatever it is that my father wants to do for me, tell him thanks but no thanks, I don't want it," I told the consul without preamble or even a greeting. "I don't want to hear anything from him right now."

"Oh, actually, unfortunately I think that you will want to hear this, Maximilian," the consul replied, using my full given first name, and I knew that this was an entirely serious affair. "Your father collapsed while he was in the shower. He's been rushed to the hospital, but the doctors say that his cancer has already advanced to the terminal stage. He has days, if not hours, left to live. The doctors have given him a week to live but he knows that they are just trying to be overly optimistic. But what I'm really trying to say, Max, is that your father would like to talk to you one more time before he dies."