Time constantly amazes me; it seems no matter how much I savour the day or look at the world around me, before I know it, time has flown, and I'm back to buying overpriced gifts that no one will use and stuffing turkeys. Though, I do notice the clouds and how fast they move. Most people don't look at what's above them, so they assume that they move slowly, but they know that time moves fast. We barely notice the changing of the day, but when we really look, head tilted and eyes wide, we notice that the clouds are a visual representation of time, and so we must treasure the short time we do have, or else it will fly by us, and we will discover how much of it we have wasted.
I'm aware it's not as easy as I preach it to be; life continuously gets in the way of life, and this year my grief has been holding me up by the throat. My first experience of grief during my first experience of being thirty, and I'm already forlorn and dreaded by my age, with the emergence of grey hairs and wrinkles denting my skin, I am forced to get used to a new look as well as a new feeling, and I am aware enough to know that grief does not look as good on me as it does on my older sister, who is lucky enough to get the sun all year round from teaching in Spain. Part of me believes she's not even sad that our dad is gone. But Dad's passing has ripped our remaining family in two. Mum is coping by straddling a new man each week, which I like to believe she's doing in an attempt to ride her way into heaven to reunite with her love. And poor Grandma is still at home bathing in her tears, I imagine.
And me, well, I'm still me. I'm me with an added expression, a frown that never goes away and a heart that I don't know will ever heal. I've been drowning out the thoughts of him in sour coffee and cheap chocolate; it's making my stomach churn. I go and get some paracetamol from the cupboard, and on the floor behind a crate I see the name 'Gary x.'. It's for Dad; I suppose he forgot to open it before he passed, but what business would a morbidly obese man with diabetes have walking to the cupboard and either crouching down or letting the letter fall onto the cupboard floor? Someone must've hidden it from him. I don't know what it was, but a bad feeling came over me.
I had tried to brush this finding off, but something inside me, my intuition, had a bad feeling about this letter. I had to find out who wrote it; maybe it had something to do with Dad's death. The doctors had written it off as heart failure, as they always do with the morbidly obese, but that didn't explain the scratch marks on his face. I had brushed it off at the time; we all did, but now there was something more, and I knew it related to his death; I could feel it. I was desperate to open it, but I thought I would wait until Mum was here on Christmas Eve.
Christmas Eve came, and Mum, Marla, and Grandma were standing around by the fireplace as I poured their glasses full of wine before joining them in their awkwardness. I decided to break the unnatural silence.
'First Christmas without Dad,' I said.
'Don't,' replied Mum, taking a sip of her wine.
She looked so sad; I felt stupid for bringing it up; it was all still fresh.
'So Marla, how's Spain?' Grandma said, saving us all as usual.
'Spain is Spain.' Marla replied with a slight laugh, 'It's good, Grandma; hotter than here.'
We all sniggered out of pity and sipped our wines. How funny it is to be standing around so forlornly with your own family on Christmas Eve when your father recently passed. How funny indeed.
After dinner we sat down to watch a movie; at least this way we didn't have to talk to each other; we could watch other people talk to each other instead. I was looking at the screen, but I wasn't watching; I kept thinking of that letter, imagining what it must contain. I always trust my intuition, but I just couldn't believe such a thing would make me feel so strongly, almost sick. I was anxious, and a part of me believed I already knew what it said, but my mind was yet to discover it.
Before I knew it, my mouth started opening.
'There's a letter,' I said abruptly, speaking purely on impulse.
Everyone turned to face me.
'What?' Mum said.
'A letter addressed to Dad' I replied, 'I found it in the food cupboard, on the floor.'
'Well, what was it doing there?' she said.
'did you open it?' Marla said
'no, I feel like I shouldn't, I think you should mum, its giving me a bad feeling for some reason'
'alright then, show it to me'
I retrieved the letter and handed it to Mum, me, Marla and Grandma hovered over her, curious as to what it might say. She opened it with carelessness, and my eyes were eagerly fixated.
'What does it say?' Marla said eagerly.
'All right, I haven't even opened it all the way yet.'
She opened the letter, which said:
To Gerald,
What a time we have had! Who knew your illness would bring us both together? It's the care I give, you appreciate it greatly. I see it in the way your eyes scan my face when I'm dressing your feet or the way you brush my hair aside when I'm washing your legs. Oh, how I swoon at the light touch of your fingers against my arm when I wish you farewell. If only you weren't married to that old witch, I could look after you forever, Gerald. She doesn't love you like I do.
Love
Christa x
We stood still with shock, me and Marla wide-eyed at what we had just heard. Mum's head was down, still staring at the letter. She started to giggle and then scream.
'I knew it,' she shouted, louder than I've ever heard before. She stood up, stamping her feet and jumping about in a way that I couldn't tell was anger or excitement.
She stopped abruptly and looked at me and Marla.
'Girls, you should know why I am not surprised by this letter. Your dad was a pig; he hired women to come round every Saturday so he could have alone time with them. He said I was washed up and of no use to him, so I stayed in our bedroom while this was going on downstairs. I was in love with him, girls. But when the women stopped coming round the house, just around the same time Christie became his new carer, I suspected what was going on, and this time I was angry. Please don't hate me for what I'm about to say'.
I stood there shocked. Finding out your dead father is a man whore shortly after his death is something no one ever expects. I was sad to know he was like that; I felt disgust, and I was afraid at what Mum was going to say next.
'Okay, I'm just going to say it,' she said with a hesitation.
Suddenly her brows furrowed and her cheeks went red, her lips were pursed, and I thought she was going to scream again.
'I smothered that fat bastard!' she screamed. 'With his own fucking pillow!'
I gasped and vomited over Marla, who was standing still with her mouth wide open. Grandma was there shaking her head in disbelief. I never would've guessed those words to come out of my mother's mouth. Although I threw up, I didn't feel any hatred towards her; I felt empowered. I had vomited because of Dad, who he really was.
Marla wasn't as calm as I had turned out to be. She quickly phoned the police, saying that someone had been hurt and they needed to come right away. As soon as she put the phone down, we all looked at each other, and at that moment I knew no one was going to tell on Mum; we loved her too much, more than Dad. When the police got here, we had Grandma pretend to be dead, then 'Boo' eyes opened.
'What's going on?' she said to the officer.
'Grandma, we thought you were dead,' Marla said in her best acting.
'Don't be stupid; I was just sleeping,' Grandma replied.
We apologised to the officers, and they were on their way. We laughed once they were gone, and for the first time since Dad died, we felt connected; we weren't the lost family we were a few days ago. Finding out the truth brought us together somehow, for deep down we all knew what Dad was really like; he was a misogynistic, pompous perv, but he was our dad, so we brushed that aside. Now that he was dead, we felt relieved.
We all woke for Christmas, our first Christmas without the need for the television to be all the way up and crisp crumbs to be splattered on the floor. It was a quiet and peaceful Christmas with all the women, something I think we all needed.
'All right, Mum, you first,' I said, handing Mum the first present to open.
'It's from Grandma.'
She opened the present, and her face went red; me and Marla looked at each other confused, and Grandma was covering her face.
'What is it?' Marla said
With a gulp, 'It's a pillow.'.
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