Reunion

“You came…”

The impossibly old man raises a weary and frail hand in greeting, it does not quite reach the heights it once did, it barely hangs half way to its intended destination, as though it forgot what it was supposed to do. John supposes that this is how it goes at this age, the wiring is wearing out and the signal is weak.

“I did,” John says, his voice is quieter than he’d intended. Even after all this time, he feels strained. He eyes the old man and wonders how he got so old. Not for the first time, he wonders where all the years have gone, but he knows the answer to that. He’s been busy. He made himself busy and he remained stubborn, fending off the eventuality of this very day.

“I didn’t think you would,” says the old man, “not now…”

He smiles and his rheumy eyes shine with a life that once filled every inch of this failing body. The body is now weak, but the power of the man who once was endures. John shifts uncomfortably, still at a disadvantage after all this time.

“You’re dying,” John says, his voice even quieter, diminished somehow.

“And about time too,” says the old man.

“Don’t say that,” John snaps.

The old man perks up a little and observes John with shrewd eyes. John anticipates a rebuke that does not materialise, “I’ve had a good innings,” he says instead, “outlived everyone around me.”

John smarts at this, there was a rebuke after all. John hasn’t been around this man. Not for a very, very long time.

The old man sees this, “please sit awhile, I am so glad you came.”

“How could I not?” asks John as he takes a seat by the old man’s bed.

The old man raises an eyebrow, they both know the answer to that question of John’s. John has not been to visit the old man in many a year.

John sighs, “I am old too…”

“Not to me you’re not,” says the old man fondly, “you will always be my little boy.”

John sighs again and almost tells his estranged father not to say such things. It is with a will that he stays his tongue.

“Even after all this time?” his father asks.

John glares at him, “you haven’t changed,” he says in an angry monotone.

His father seems to give the very slightest shakes of his head. It could be his shot nervous system, but John doubts it and he dislikes him for the movement, “you still cling to that? You were never going to change me, Sparrow.”

Sparrow.

His father’s name for him from since before he could remember. A name that he should have outgrown during his childhood, but never did. Not as far as his father was concerned anyway. John is no longer the young, flighty child that he was, but his heart leaps at that name. No one else used it. It was theirs and theirs alone.

“I wanted you to…” John tapers off. He wasn’t going to say change, they both know that. There is so much he could say, but even now, the words do not come.

“Still stubborn…” his father smiles again, “bad family trait, that. On both sides.”

John’s hackles rise. Even after all this time he rises up against his father in defence of his other family. Prepared to fight this old man. Frightened of a spent force and standing up to him all the same. This despite the major players all being gone now. John is now that family’s only representative, but he barely registers this, it is habit and old habits die hard.

“Yeah well,” John says sharply, “you don’t have to worry about that side anymore.”

Now the old man does shake his head, “I take it you are referring to your Mum’s death? That was what? Ten years ago?”

“More like twenty,” John corrects him.

“Yes,” his father says, “I suppose it is. Time flies, especially when you’re an old fart like me.”

John looks uncomfortably at the fragile figure of the man who was once his Dad, “why didn’t you…”

Again he trails off, but the question lays between them all the same.

“You knew, but I told you all the same,” the old man draws in a deep, laboured breath, “I was always here for you. You walked away, it was for you to return to me , not for me to chase you to the four corners of the Earth.”

“But you were my Dad!” his voice is high-pitched. Pleading. Childlike.

“Still am,” the old man states.

“You were supposed to…” John begins. He is becoming increasingly annoyed and frustrated at his inability to make himself clear. He has after all had plenty of time to formulate his words. He has imagined time and time again how it would be when he saw this man again.

If he ever saw his father again.

“There you go again,” says the old man.

John rolls his eyes, “not this again…”

“You wanted to dictate how it was I should be. You wanted to mould me into what you thought was an ideal. Where do you think you got that from?”

John glares at the old man and all coherent thought is banished. Even after the best part of twenty years, the loss of his mother hits hard, as does the freefall his life went into after that. Underlying all of this is the terrible thought that his Dad might have been right. John cannot concede that point, his life is so heavily invested in his being right and his father being wrong and that is all there is to it.

The old man watches him awhile, hoping that the anger will abate. Hoping that John will come to himself. Hoping against hope that he will see the little boy he raised. The one who was the pea in his pod. The child who had existed in this world before the complete, unwarranted and inexplicable rejection. A rejection forged in the grip of a woman clinging on too tightly to a little boy she did not want to see grow up and leave her.

And he never did leave her.

The old man knows that John never left the house he shared with his mother. He never married. Just like his mother, he failed to move on. He failed to launch, and this went against everything the old man was about and everything they had shared together as the boy was growing up. Father and son had been inseparable. They had shared so much. Their time together was never dull, even when they sat together and watched a film after a day out in the wilds, the bond between them fizzed with life and energy. The old man devoted himself to his only child and was constantly reminded of what was important in life, he learnt from John even as he taught the little lad all he knew, all that was important to know in order to go out into the world and stand on his own two feet.

All of that was torn apart in a moment that was a long time coming. John’s mother wanted different things for John. John’s mother wanted control. She accommodated his father under a watchful sufferance and made darn sure that John knew where his allegiances lay. When he was very young, she questioned him unceasingly about his time with his father until John was in the habit of going full disclosure on his Dad. John’s mother would show her displeasure at what she heard of John’s time with his father. Unhappy at the undue risks a father exposes his children to, she managed this father out to the margins of life, so that John was clear on what and who was important.

The old man rolled with this. What else could he do? Besides, his bond with John was strong and nothing could tear them apart. Or so he had thought. 

In believing this, he walked blindly into the worst of moments.

When the hammer blow came, John’s father was devastated and crushed. The pain was beyond anything he could have imagined. But again, what could he do? He couldn’t force his boy to do anything and he wouldn’t resort to that. Reason was the only way forward as far as the man was concerned, but neither John nor his mother would ever see reason. 

The old man inwardly sighs as he sees that John will not let go, not even after all these years. He will never see reason, but it is enough that he is here. This is more than the old man had ever hoped for, after the first weeks and months of rejection rolled over him and crushed the very life out of him.

He has to ask the question all the same, he tries to ask it as gently as is possible, “what brought you here, today of all days?”

All of a sudden, John looks shaken and somehow smaller. Vulnerable. The old man’s heart goes out to him and all he sees is his little boy. The boy he would take in his arms and reassure with a hug and words of support and advice, helping him to see a way through to a brighter place. Raising his head and urging him forward. Onwards and upwards. Always onwards, ever upwards.

“I’m dying,” he tells his father.

A dreadful silence falls over the room. The old man is angry, but he does not want to respond with anger. His anger is justified and yet it is not. Why did John wait all this time to come to see him? He should never have walked away. Now, in reconciling himself with his father, he is taking it all away again, only this time with a cruel finality that cannot be argued with.

What a waste!

“You and me both, Sparrow…” says the old man sadly.

They sit in silence some more.

Then the old man speaks to dispel the silence, not wanting to waste these precious moments that they still have afforded to them, “how long have you got?”

“Not long,” John whispers, his face contorting as he fights his tears.

“You’ve only just been diagnosed?” asks his Dad.

John nods, “cancer. Riddled with it.”

“I’m so sorry Sparrow,” says the old man.

“Are you?” John snaps angrily.

“Yes. Yes, I wish we could have had more time together,” replies his father.

Now John is vehemently shaking his head, “that was never going to happen.”

The old man opens his mouth, but stays the words that he was on the verge of speaking. He sees the truth of it now. His son did not come here to reconcile himself to his father. His son does not see the point to that now, and there is nothing the old man can do to change his mind. There was nothing he could ever do. That was all down to John, and one day, John stopped listening to his father. He took sides when there were no sides to take, there was only John. There was only ever John, but the boy didn’t see it that way and he decided not to see his Dad again. John decided to punish his father. 

After all this time, the old man wonders what John can be punishing him for now. He cannot see the point in any further punishment. There has been too much hurt already.

But then he sees it.

He sees what John sees, and can only wish that this were not the case. There is nothing he can say to make it right. Nothing to be said after all this time.

The old man was right. He was right all along. But for the old man, it was never about being right and this John sees too. 

It just was.

The old man stood up for his values and he stood by what was right.

He stood up for John, his son, his little boy.

Yet the little boy defied him.

John didn’t see what was right. He did not value that and he did not value himself. He believed in people instead. He believed his mother was right, come what may. He placed a complete and misguided loyalty into a single human being, and it trapped him in a life that was a pale shadow of the one that he was meant to lead.

John painted himself into a corner and blinded himself to the truth of it with his anger, then he drowned himself in an avalanche of hurt and pain. All he could see was conflict. He stubbornly needed to be right, even though he knew he was wrong right from the very start. The pain of it told him that much.

All these years have been pointless waste.

There was no need for any of it.

No one wanted this for him. No one. But he could not let go.

Even now, he convinces himself that this is the case. That he couldn’t let go, not that he chose to hold on to something that twisted him out of shape and hurt him each and every day. That in the end he would rather hold onto a falsehood and the pain it brought with it, than to his own father’s hand.

John stands up, shaking with all those emotions he took with him that fateful day all those years ago when he walked away from this man.

“Sparrow…” the old man’s voice is strong, powerful and just the same as it was back then. John is the petulant little boy. Brim full of confusing emotions and thoughts. Too proud to accept his father. Too stubborn to back down.

They play out the same sad scene and there is nothing the old man can do to change a thing. 

“…please don’t,” he says in a voice diminished by the years and the constant pain of separation from the one thing he loved most in the world. The one thing he thought he’d lost forever.

He watches his little Sparrow walk towards the door of the room, walking out of his life yet again.

John does not turn back. He does not see the stricken look on the face of the old man, he fails to see the look of utter and complete love of a father for his son.

John does not see his father take a final stuttering breath.

The old man is dead before John has left the room.