Don’t Hold This Speech At My funeral

Don’t Hold This Speech At My funeral 

Dear those I left behind…

The world caved in and I let it. None of you were enough. None of you showed me the way out of the darkness. I swallowed every sunset and muted the chirping of the birds. Under my feet, the green grass withered. Under my touch, the flower petals browned.

I was not born like this. You made me this way. The world taunted and tormented my heart until it gave in. Born compassionate, I was. Turned bitter, I am. Bitter enough to mark down the names of those who hurt me. Bitter enough to write this letter; and not to provide you with answers, not to let you off easy, but to scorch my pain onto paper and afflict upon you all a heart-wrenching guilt.

No, no. Gosh, I can’t write this! Not when I imagine my father open this letter and fall to his knees. 

He would probably be sitting alone in his little post-divorce apartment. The table would be set with one plate, one glass, one fork and one knife. His frail hand, that had once caressed my cheek, would lift a single portion of pasta onto the plate. Glass filled with wine or beer, perhaps something stronger to drown his sorrows. Bite after bite, the pasta slowly glides down his throat. It doesn’t taste like it did when the table was set with four plates and lively chatter. He can barely get it down. He doesn’t even fucking like pasta. But his wife did, and his children did. So under the dim light of the kitchen lamp, the plate is scraped and emptied. The glass is refilled. Twice. Thrice? He doesn’t remember anymore.

The phone in his pocket is burning. It always does at night’s end. But who can he call? His wife, maybe? He used to call her Little Love. She was a little woman and remained so through age. Together, Little Love and him watched the world grow bigger. Soon they filled the space with two littler loves. A son with a quick intelligence and his mother’s eyes . A daughter. 

He puts his phone aside and forgets about it. Little Love is not his wife anymore. His son is failing in school. He doesn’t remember the color of his daughter’s eyes. The world has grown infinitely bigger, and he has no one to fill it. But maybe the wine can? 

No, no. It can’t.

Void of alcohol or consumed by it, his heart wallows in pain and isolation either way. The only company he can find is in the twilight sky, blinking and mesmerizing. What has he done to deserve this?

Drip. Drip. My tears stain the black ink. 

Out of nowhere, the door bell goes off. It disrupts the peace that the alcohol had so friendly provided to him. He moves to the window at the second floor to see who it is. Something he always does, in case the company is unwanted. But there’s no one at the door, he realizes. Instead, he makes out a mysterious figure that is pacing away from his house, strolling towards the river that runs dauntingly by at the end of the road. 

An unfamiliar shadow, but they did ring his door nonetheless. It is not imagination. The alcohol is not tricking him this time. He is certain of it. Inside his mind, an ocean of chaos resides. Truth and lies sculpts from side to side. But this, the striking sound of the door bell; ding. ding. And that figure pacing towards the river; swish. swosh. That is truth. It must be!

He leaves his house in the dark. The front door remains open and is quickly taken by the wind, slamming back and forth like people are leaving and entering at the same time. But only one person had left, and that was him. He is chasing after the figure, seeking the company of the lost soul that clearly had intended to speak with him. 

‘Where are you going!’ he yells out. ‘Don’t leave me!’

Had he really scared them away without even encountering them? And where is the figure now? His head whips around in all directions, frantic and worried it is just another delusion. 

His hands comes to rest on the railing that overlooks the river. The figure isn’t there, but the dark abyss of water is. Hopeless and in pain, he imagines himself giving in to the current; letting his final fate be decided by the changing pattern of the tides. 

His eyes narrows in on something, and he wonders if someone else made the same decision. A black body swirls around in the water, streaming down against the open sea. 

Under the bursting trees he sees the world in a new kind of darkness. His legs take him pacing back to the house. Damn the lords for cursing him to remember that which he had forgotten! Damn fate for leading him back to the letter his consciousness had barely registered when chasing after the figure! 

For here, glistening on the porch under a blaze of moonlight, lies a white envelope. It is addressed to him personally, and not to his first or last name, not to some neutral title like Mr or Sir. No, the black ink carved onto the fragile paper reads something else. Something much worse. Something that makes him quiver in guilt and fall to his knees like a man that has sinned and regrets it terribly.

Dear father…it says. 

And he realizes it was his own daughter whom floated in the river, and this was her final goodbye. Not that he would need a letter to confirm this. Just rip out his heart and tear it apart and you would find that he always knew, he always knew that his own lucidity would drive his daughter to a miserable fate. 

And she hoped he did know. She hoped that before she slipped away, his guilt would gnaw at him, eating away at the man he saw in the mirror. Maybe then he would swallow his pride and face the bitter truth: that he had become a drunken shell of the father he once was. Maybe then his trembling hand would reach for that final bottle, the sharp scent of vodka seeping into the walls, clinging to the air, a stench that no one left behind could ever fully erase. Maybe then, as he choked down the liquor, it wouldn’t just numb his pain temporarily—it would finally, irreversibly, consume him.

No, god! What am I thinking? How could I possibly want this ending for anyone? How can I think of destroying him like he destroyed me? How can I think of leaving him like he left me?!

Scratch all I said. Let my tears wash the ink away. I take it back. Father is not a horrible person. Yes, he messed up my mind with his cruel words, yes, he blamed me for his own misery, yes, I was never good enough, yes, he threatened to leave me behind countless of times, yes, he scared me to sleep, yes, he was a monster!

But then...at the crack of dawn, under the painted sky and scorching sun, I see him sometimes. And I see him with such force of adoration, like everything bad about him is whisked away. Like when I got up from bed and put on my bunny slippers, and walked down the stairs and into the kitchen, he would actually be there, smiling. 

That dad would stand there in his royal robe, the scent of strong coffee hitting my nose. I would frown at the adult smell, and he would make me a cup of hot chocolate instead. A pot of warming milk, cocoa powder on the floor and on my cheeks, jazz tunes floating through the morning air, Ella and Louis, his favorites and therefore mine too. The table is set with two plates, two cups and two spoons. A bonding moment between father and daughter before the rest of the house is up and croons.

One father, one daughter. One drunk, both drowned.

Drip. Drip. My tears seals the envelope.