Mother/Father: Part 1 (A Short Story)
Father is dead. Mother told me this morning as we made breakfast for Ms. Sutherland.
Once made, I climb the stairs and knock thrice at her bedroom door, as I always do, and await her reply.
The frail voice of our lodger seeps under the door. “Yes, come.”
I will always remember the musk of the room, even when she passes in the winter, and a new lodger must be found. Mother could not rid the room of its scent, and sold the house the following spring. Perhaps it was for the best.
“Did you hear the thunderstorm last night, boy?” Ms Sutherland asks.
“No, I did not,” I reply as my hands tremble from the weight of the teacup. Or perhaps something else I did not yet understand.
“Father is dead, if Mother had not informed you.”
I stand in silence for a moment, questioning what I had just said.
“A good man,” Ms Sutherland says before taking the cup from me, my arms falling in respite. “The lord giveth, and the lord taketh away,” she says.
“Take your leave. To your mother, boy.”
Mother and I had walked down to the harbour in the later morning. It is twenty minutes from our house at the top of the hill overlooking the town. We had told those we saw of the news. The Greengrocer had given Mother an extra egg as condolence.
I had barely known Father, so I do not weep.
Mother had known him, so she does.
The harbour holds twenty boats or so, each filled with its owners, who are cleaning, tying ropes or offloading their daily haul. Behind, in the distance, the white shimmer of the town’s lighthouse speckles across the glassy sea. It is strange, for I have have never seen its light in my years on this earth.
What remained of Father’s boat had been brought back to the harbour by Mr. Sherring, another fisherman for whom Mother particularly liked.
“No-one could have survived that, Ma’am,” Mr. Sherring says.
“I understand. It is to be,” says Mother.
They would marry four years from this day, but I could not have known of this yet.
I would learn, upon Mother’s death thirty-two years from that day, that she and Mr. Sherring had known each other’s bodies whilst Father was out at sea. I cannot judge her, for I cannot know the feeling of someone leaving you when you are not ready for them to.
I look out the window as Mother speaks with the Officer, detailing her life with Father, Ms. Sutherland‘s arrival to our house, and how I came to be in the summer eleven years ago. I do not hear any of this, I am assured by Mother the following day, for I had been watching the silent waves through the glass.
Did Father know of the storm I wonder. Had he known of the rocks patiently waiting for him. Rocks that should shatter the hull and break the ship in two. How we would be entangled in the netting, never to surface. Surely he would have. He had rarely set foot on land the past months, for Mother had complained about it nightly to Ms. Sutherland.
Why was he well past where the other men were trawling. Miles further. So far that none could have seen nor saved him. None would have dared try. “Why would he have been on the sea at all, given last night’s dreadful weather?” Mother asks the Officer.
He does not answer.
Mother disappears to another room for but a moment, only to return crying into her handkerchief. I do not understand.
In the evening, Mother and I arrive at Mr. O’Neil’s Tavern. She had been invited by Mr. Sherring, but had assured him that I too must attend. It felt as though he had opposed such an idea, for he ignored me the moment we arrived.
“It was his time, was it not?” Mr. O’Neil asks Mother as he serves her a pint.
“But we cannot foretell such timings,” Mother says.
“Perhaps, but these are the rules of this lord.”
Old friends, weathered by the sea, share stories of Father’s youth as ale intrudes their veins. Laughter bellows through the tavern, its wood filling with warmth; with memories. It is as if Father were alive, were sitting with these men for whom I am certain longed for his return. How many times had Father sat here, washing such memories away. Memories I had not known until now. Had not understood. Why would one do that. For life is worth remembering, is it not?
No.
My own children will visit this place only once, when my skin has too endured the sorrows of life. When I have learned of such things I never wished to have known. And in that moment, I , like Father, hope some memories had too been lost.
Who was this man I did not know? Who I feel I knew nothing of. I know Father only as Father, and nothing more.
This is the tragedy of being someone’s.
It has been four days since Father’s death, and I look to the empty hole in the earth where Father shall rest.
Half the town has attended to pay their respects, a silence rippling through the sea of gatherers, as Mother wipes yet another tear from her cheek.
Ms. Sutherland had, for the first time since I had known her, left her room upstairs to console Mother; her arm comes around the arch of Mother’s back, landing on her shoulder in a welcomed embrace.
Men, including Mr. Sherring, throw dirt at Father as he is lowered.
“Eternal rest grant unto them, O Lord, and let perpetual light shine upon them,” the Priest says.
Light. Why light. Light guides us, warms us, embraces us. Darkness is the absence of light. Death is the absence of light.
Part 2 Coming Soon…
@ Christopher Sampson
