Letters Across the Dark

Dear Christian,

I would address you as dad, but Mum has always been adamant that I wasn't supposed to “He is your father, not your dad”, she’d say. It's not that I don't agree; It does just feel odd to call someone who makes up half of my DNA by their first name, but then again, it’s far odder for you not to call me anything at all. As you’re probably aware, you’ve missed a lot: Birthdays, Christmases, all apparently things a father should be attending; you’ve missed almost 20 of those with me. But to me, those don’t mean much; those celebrations are global loneliness pandemics, set upon the world by some unruly being, hell-bent on ensuring no one can go one big hoop around the sun without being reminded of everyone and everything they don't have every year. This year was the first year without Nan, a greyscale year with an eerily apparent lack of working bees, family lunches, cinema trips, recommended books, Elvis-impersonating Christmas toys and hugs so warm you feel like you’ve been placed two feet from the sun. Not that you’re supposed to care; she wasn’t your Mum, but she was somewhat mine. The things I’ve always wished you were here for were much simpler, my first soccer goal, the first time I shaved (I cut my neck open, looked like a suicide), all the times mum cried, my first job interview when I broke my wrist trying to learn to skateboard and subsequently lost motivation, or the one time I fell in love and ran out of people to tell. I’m sending you this letter for no other reason than to remind you of my existence, in case there was a little section of your cold heart that was interested in what your son has been up to for the past 20 or so years, just in case you wanted to care for a second, just in case you wanted to show up, just in case you existed.

Bye,

Your son,

You know my name.

Dearest Ethan, “Dearest?” Right.

I can’t even begin to imagine the pain that I have caused you, and I understand if this letter falls upon deaf ears. No apology? Seriously? Unbelievable. I will never blame you for hating me or ignoring me after all of these long years. I am sending this letter in reply to your solemn message “Solemn Message”. Who does this guy think he is? I appreciate the thought that you had in contacting me, and I know there is no way I could ever apologise enough for what my absence has done to you, but for what it is worth, I will try. Don’t Bother it is not worth the ink. It has been 21 years and 117 days since I last saw you, and this period has been one of the toughest for me, as a father, to not see you and your beautiful sister. Of course you know how long it's been, I was too young to even remember when you left us! Do you want a medal for doing basic math?. I have missed many milestones that I wish I could have been a part of: getting your license, your first job, your first detention (HAHA) or your first beer. My first detention... “HAHA” you cannot be serious “HAHA”, really? ‘HAHA!”. I hope one day you can forgive me for all the time that I have missed being in your life, but I’ll understand if that day never comes.

There is something that I need to ensure you know: I have cancer, Myeloma to be exact. It’s a blood cancer, and it is always chronic and terminal. I have been under treatment for about 4 months now, and my prognosis is 1 more year if I am lucky. Now, I’m not going to sit here and say that you should feel sorry for me or that I hope this motivates you to come and see me sometime, but I thought it is something that you should know. I still live in my old house on Australia Road if you ever are in the area and want to come see a dying man. You can’t just spring this shit on me! I know it's not true; Mum always said you were a liar. Nan died of cancer a year ago, and now you’re just gonna make up some bull story about having 1 year to live?

Lots of Love You don’t love me

Your Father

Christian

To Christian

The first line of your letter said, “I can't even begin to imagine the pain that I have caused you”, but I want you to understand, that you have caused me no pain, you have simply caused me nothing, ever, don't ever forget that. The effect you have had on me since the last time I saw you was mute, you never did anything to keep me and therefore you have had no influence on the way I grew up and have nothing about me to be proud of, anything I have gained or done has been thanks to me, and me alone. This will be the last piece of writing you ever receive from me, and under no circumstances will I be reading anything you reply with. With that being said, I have some points in reply to your selfishness, the same selfishness that led you from your family, the same selfishness that led you to write a ridiculous letter like that, the same selfishness that thinks I should care at all about you, how you feel or where you are.

Now, onto your “Cancer”, regardless of whether it is true, how could you possibly expect me to care? You never cared about me, you never gave me a second of your time from the day I turned 2 years old, and you expect me to come back in with the “Oh poor baby” treatment? After all that you’ve missed, after all that you put my family through because you were too ignorant, too lazy to take the time to raise your children, you think you can come back to me and say you have cancer and I should come and see you? Keep dreaming. The day I come and see you is the day I give up on myself, give up on my family, and the day I give up on being a man.

Don’t contact me,

Ethan.

Dear Ethan,

I completely understand if you never read this letter, after what I have done to you, your sister and your mother, I can not expect anything from you. In saying that, I can no longer live with myself if I were to miss out on the opportunity to contact you, my greatest mistake will always be me having left you three, and that is a mistake that took me many years to understand as such a disastrous mishap. The value of a family, of loving, or reaping what you sow and putting the extra mile in to see someone smile, all for my immediate selfish gain as a young adult, is never not going to be something I deeply regret. This is not simply due to everything I feel that I have missed, all of the major events and opportunities that I have missed, but also the missed effort, the small things, seeing your smile, seeing you laugh, being there for you if you cry. These are the things that I regret most, having the ability to help you through tough times, and teach you things that I wish I had been taught when I was younger, these opportunities to simply exist within your life are something I will forever miss.

I am not making excuses for myself with my diagnosis, I must believe it to be some kind of divine retribution brought down by whatever god or gods exist above to remind me of that grave mistake I made many years ago. I see this as an opportunity for me to gain repentance through an early death, repentance for the death of a love that I brought upon you. For every possible love that I have killed between me and others in my lifetime, a cell of cancer compounds itself within me, for every relationship severed by my selfishness, a cell of me dies, this will repeat itself until I am no longer here, and then I will be but cancer, and no longer a father who let the world walk away from me.

Thank you,

With love

Christian

Dearest Ethan,

It has been six months since I last wrote, 6 months and a day since I last received a letter from you, and I entirely understand why. I am writing this email after I have completed my final round of chemo, this brutal system has wrung me dry of anything I thought was human in myself, it has killed me and revived me so many times that what is left is remnants of my true self. But with that, these remnants are at the very least, the best remnants of me, the only remnants that existed under layers and layers of paint, stripped back over these last 6 months to expose the Christian that I always was, a man lost to time, lost to selfishness and ignorance, lost to years of regretful decision and indecision. 

I am again sorry for everything that I have done to you, and every pain that I have caused you, if I could undo my life in order to grant you a father, even if it cost me my very existence up until this point, I would do it, even if the replacement was another man, a man who got to see everything I wish I could have, just to know that you were cared for in the very way that I should have, I would never have thought twice about it. I am sorry from the deepest and now only part of me that exists still, not the sorries of before, not the empty gifts of apology I have given to you, or your mother in the past, but a true form of sorry, one with wings and eyes like a monarch, one that knows how sorry I am, one that holds inside it a hate for myself, and a love for you so strong that it ushers on its very existence, I offer that to you. I don't expect anything in exchange, I have since lost any hope of seeing you again, for your sake, I hope you have the courage I didn’t have, the courage to never come to see me, that is the courage I wish onto you, this is the one instance of ignorance I hope you can excuse.

Love,

Your Father,

Christian.

Dearest Ethan,

This letter comes from my heart, but not my hand, a kind nurse has volunteered to write this letter for me, and I’m both saddened and delighted to say, it will certainly be my last. In the last 3 months since my previous letter, I have done a lot, not physically, but I have still done a lot… 

I will not bore you with what I have done, but I will say every decision I have made in the past 9 months has been to retribute that singular decision I made some 22 years, 1 month and 1 day ago. My legs are no longer my legs, when I move them, they crush under the weight of my skin, then cannot hold my weight, and they move like building machinery. My arms are no longer my arms, their mechanisms are exposed, as I command my fingers to move I see their complicated ropes fidget in my arm and it rests without a single movement. I am simply a head, existing on a bag of bones and blood, plugged into man-made machines to exist solely for the purpose of ensuring my life ends in a way that I never forget every transgression I have ever made. For you, your sister, and your mother, I offer you everything I have owned, split evenly, I know this is not consolation for my mistakes, for the difficulties those mistakes brought to you and the ignorance I showed toward everything I left in my wake. But here, now, I see that you’re all I have left to show for myself, everything I owned, everything I did, everything I allowed to excuse my poor decisions, amounts to nothing, so I hope you can take this nothingness. I beg you to burn it if that's what you see fit, use it to do more of the great things I trust you have committed to in my absence, or take it for your own enjoyment. But I urge you, to take just one piece of advice from a head now only truly sentient at the end of its host's life. Love everything to its fullest, do everything to its fullest, no matter how hard it is, no matter how much easier it would be to give it all up, do not give up. Push forward with everything you have, all to an end of love, an end of relationships, not an end of self-satisfaction and ownership.

I truly do love you for what the love of a man like me could be worth, I gave up everything for myself at one point, and now I give up myself for nothing, so, please don't repeat my mistake.

You’ll be forever in my heart

Love,

Dad.

END.