Dad, No One Will Laugh at You Anymore chapter 07
He could not accept that it was his own fault, that his obsession with appearances and his terror of being laughed at had driven his own son to death.
The day of the funeral, snow fell thick and heavy and blanketed everything in white. Not many people came. Only Uncle Ray’s family and a small group of relatives attended.
Dad wore black and sat at the front while he held my photograph in both hands. In the picture, I was ten years old and grinning with my eyes crinkled as I clutched a lollipop. It had been taken the year before Mom died, at a park Dad had brought me to. It was the happiest photo ever taken of me.
He stared at it while tears ran down his face and murmured under his breath. “Kellen, Dad’s taking you home. No one will ever laugh at you again. No one will ever hurt you again.”
His voice was barely there, soft and gentle, like he was soothing a sleeping child.
After the funeral, Dad brought my ashes home and placed the urn in my room, on the desk. Every day he wiped the photograph clean and set out the foods I used to love, as though I were still alive.
He started talking to me, as though I were still right there beside him.
“Kellen, the weather’s nice today. Want Dad to take you for a walk downstairs?”
“Kellen, Dad made soup. Will you try some?”
“Kellen, Dad was wrong. Will you forgive me?”
He stopped leaving the house. He stopped seeing the relatives. He was afraid of the way people looked at him now and afraid of what they said behind his back.
In the end, he was still afraid of being laughed at. This time, that fear had become a chain sunk into his bones, and it would never come off.
Brady came by once. He stood at the door with a bag of fruit and a carton of milk and hesitated for a long time before he worked up the nerve to knock.
Dad opened the door, saw him, and did not yell or turn him away. He said quietly, “Come in.”
Brady walked to my photograph and stood in front of it for a long moment with his head lowered. Tears spilled down his face. “Kellen, I’m sorry. It was my fault. I lied about you. Will you forgive me?”
He sat in the living room with his head lowered and talked to Dad for a long time. He said he had always envied me growing up. He said all he had ever wanted was to win Dad’s approval and to know what it felt like to be cared for by a father. He said he had never imagined it would push me over the edge.
Dad listened in silence the entire time. When Brady finished, Dad spoke with a flat and distant voice. “It wasn’t your fault. It was mine. I’m the one who drove him away.”
When Brady left, he broke down in the doorway and grabbed Dad’s hand with both of his. “Uncle Phil, I’ll come see you all the time from now on. I’ll take care of you the way Kellen would have.”
Dad did not respond. He stared at my photograph with empty eyes.
After that, Brady came often. He brought Dad food, cleaned the house, and sat with him and talked. Dad kept him at a polite distance, never warm and never cold.
He knew Brady was trying to make amends. No amount of making amends would bring me back.
The days passed. The snow melted and spring arrived. The trees in the neighborhood pushed out new buds, and everything came back to life.
However, our house stayed frozen in that snowy holiday, and it always would.
Dad still sat in my room every day and looked at my photograph while he talked to me. He talked more and more as time went on, about small everyday things at first, then about his childhood, then about every memory he had of the two of us together.
He told me about the unfairness he had swallowed, the helplessness he had felt, and the regret that ate at him. He said “I’m sorry” so many times the words lost their shape.
I floated beside him and listened while I watched him grow older by the day. There was no hatred in me and no bitterness, only a faint and quiet regret.
I wished he had not needed to lose me before he understood what love actually looked like. I wished he had not waited until I was gone to let go of his pitiful pride.
I wished that the two of us, father and son for however many years we had, could have found a way to be good to each other instead of ending like this.
One day, Dad sat on my bed and held my elementary school diploma while he studied the photograph on it. Then, out of nowhere, he smiled.
It was a gentle smile, the kind that belonged to the father I remembered from when I was small.
