Tears are streaming down my father's face now, dripping off the loose skin around his jaw and chin.
I stare in shock. I have never seen my father cry. Not even at my mother's funeral.
"Your mother made me promise to live after she died, but she was the light of my life. With her gone, the light was gone and it just felt so dark and pointless. But she made me promise, so I did what I had to do to go on. That is why I burned all the photos. I couldn't go on with them around. I couldn't see her face and not remember what I had, and what I'd lost. I couldn't look at them and not shake my fist at God for taking her instead of me. It should have been me.".
The silence is punctuated by a cough and sputter. His head is bowed.
I stand abruptly, grabbing a feather duster from a nearby shelf and busy myself with tidying books and papers, fighting back tears. This is not the man I grew up with. This frail, trembling, shaking leaf of a man with tears in his eyes and regret in his voice is not the hard and cruel man I knew all of my life.
Bumping my knee on a slightly opened drawer, I try without success to close it. My hands run across a dove tail joint crafted with precision by my father's own hands. I marvel at how sturdy it still is after all these years. It's one of the many projects he worked on in my childhood spending hours and days in his workshop. He's chasing his demons, my mother once told me, losing them in the wood shavings. Almost all of the furniture in this room had been handcrafted by him, piece by piece.
My hand stills as I open the drawer to see what is keeping it from closing. Inside is a doll's bed, with the most intricately beautiful scrolls and details carved into the head and foot board. It was the one my father had given me for my 6th birthday. He had spent hours carving intricate patterns into it, sanding and staining it to perfection. It perfectly matched the head and footboard of my own bed which had awed and delighted me . I played for hours, tucking my little dolly into the bed like my mommy always did for me. That night after my birthday dinner I saw my father watching me and I ran and threw my arms around him, hugging him tightly. We played together all evening and I remember falling asleep on the couch. It was such a happy night.
The next day all I can remember is waking in the hospital. The doctors were talking to my mother who was crying in hushed tones. And my Daddy was gone. He went away for a very long time. Neither my mother or father would speak of what happened that night, and I could not remember, but nothing was ever the same after that.
For most of my life I hid the hurt that came from his spurning of me. Every once in a while I would catch him looking at me with so much love and sadness in his eyes, but I never could find the courage to ask him why he shut me out. He was always intensely private and rarely spoke of the past. The war had changed him my mother told me, and as far as I knew the only soft spot her ever had was for her.
He had all but disowned me when I got pregnant out of wedlock and I vowed I'd never speak to him again. His first stroke two years ago had changed all that, and somehow had changed him as well. I watched him lavish the love and gentleness on my daughter that he had never had for me, and it made me even angrier. I refused to do beyond what I felt was my duty to care for him. I'd buy him groceries and stock his fridge with meals, I'd fill his prescriptions for his medications but that was it. This... this was new territory. It was a father I had never known.
He places his hand lightly on my arm. The skin, covered in age spots, is so thin it is almost translucent. I can see the blue and purple spider web of veins under the skin.
Moments tick by. Can I forget all of those years when he turned his back on me.
He has never shown me love or affection, why now?
Awkward silence fills the room.
But if not now, when? I can see every time I look into his rheumy eyes that his time left is not long. My thoughts war inside me. Finally, I give in and cover his hand with my own.
" I have made mistakes. I am a foolish man. She was the best of me you know. She was what got me through the war, and all the years after. I guess I forgot how to live when she died. I wanted to die too. I didn't see any point in living. But when I look at your little Elizabeth I know I was wrong. I see so much of your mother in her." He struggles with another wheezy breath, looking up at me with his eyes full of tears.
"I know I wasn't the father you needed. I wasn't there for you. I didn't know how to be . It's no excuse, I know, but I am trying to change, even now in the twilight of my years. Forgive me Anna. Forgive an old and foolish man. "
Now tears are pouring down my face and I hug him tightly for the first time since I was a little girl.
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