The death of Clear View Park

You know the funny thing about death? It makes you reflect. Reflect on the time you’ve had with the person. Was it enough? Did it count to both you and them? Or are we just living in some complicated wasteland? Who knows? 

Clear View Park. A once thriving park is now abandoned and riddled with despair and haunted by ghosts… specifically mine. 

I haven’t been here since I was a child. And the only reason I’m here now is because my father is dead and his dying wish was to spread his ashes in this dilapidated park. I don’t really know why, I haven’t seen the man since my parents divorced and my mother moved cross-country just to get away from him. I was unaware that he still had memories of me because throughout my whole life he never called, never wrote, and never acknowledged me again. That was until I got call from a lawyer saying that he had passed and that he left me everything with specific instructions as to his ashes. I picked up his ashes, along with a letter two hours ago and had to look up directions to get back to this park. Everything about the state of this park makes me sad.

Wannabe gangsters that will mostly end up in jail had now tagged the sign that once said ‘Welcome To Clear View Park’.  The swing set is rusted and looks one bad windstorm away from falling apart. The faded green slide is cracked by years of water damaged. The monkey bars are missing a few links making it unable to cross without falling. The sand pit has more dirt and rubbish in it then a local landfill. It wasn’t just me who left the park all those years ago; it was like the park had left itself. 

I walk to the only stable thing in this park, the benches and take a seat. It was where my father used to sit with the other parents, watching me play with the other children. I don’t remember too much of my father, but being here is sparking some hidden memories. Like how he used to clap every time I crossed the monkey bars without falling. Or how he used to buy me a vanilla ice cream cone from the ice cream truck that used to park here. Or the last time he took me here. 

I was pushing eight years old and dressed as superman. He was always an extremely overly happy man but that day I remember him looking really somber but he put on a fake smile and said that he was fine. I, at the time, thought nothing really of it but now looking back, he knew. I think he knew that this was the last time we were going to see each other again. 

I place his urn right next to me as I open the letter that he left. 

Strange, this letter was dated ten years ago, when I last saw my father at this park. He must have written it when I wasn’t looking at him. 

My son, 

If you are reading this then that means I have passed away. I don’t know when you will be reading this, right now I see my little superman on the monkey bars but it could very well be years and years from now. There is a lot that I haven’t told you and I asked your mother not to say anything as well. However, since you won’t be reading this until I die, I figured I could just put what I needed to say in here. I am living on borrowed time. I require a heart transplant and I have no idea if I will get one. And even if I do, the doctors say that it won’t last more then ten years in me. Your mother and I have decided that we don’t want to put you through that pain which is why she is leaving with you tonight. I still very much love your mother and I wish her nothing but happiness. I hope she moves on but she keeps saying that she won’t. That I’m her sun and that’s the way it would always stay. 

I don’t know how much contact we will have in the future. It breaks my already broken heart having to write this to you not knowing if kept in touch with you. I hope I do call for every birthday, every Christmas. But I want to offer you a little bit of advice just in case I never get the chance to call. The secret to life is balance. Make sure you spend time with friends as much as your work. See the bad in the good and the good in the bad. Maintain a healthy diet. Meet people who are worse then you and better then you so you, yourself can see what you are lacking and what you have too much of. Travel; eat food you have never tried before. Takes lots of pictures. Fall in love more then once so you can understand what it will be like when you find the one. And treat her right. 

Even though I still have things I have never done and might not be able to do, I will die knowing that what I have achieved is enough. I am a balanced man and I will die a balanced man. 

See you on the other side. 

- Your father    

A single teardrop falls on the letter, followed by another and then another. I don’t even know why I am crying because reading this just makes me a hell of a lot angrier at him then I was before. He never kept the promise in his letter about keeping in touch. All those nights I spent crying for my father were for what? I would have rather had a dying father that was present in my life until he died then what I had… which was nothing. 

And my mother. 

She was in on all of this.

How dare she not tell me? 

I scrunch the letter in my hands feeling good ripping it apart. I didn’t need him then and I don’t need him now. I am an eighteen-year-old man. I have learnt and will continue to learn everything I need to without him. 

I grabbed his urn and like he asked, I release his ashes in the park. I take a lighter from my pockets and set the letter alight too. I think he wanted me to keep the letter so that way I can always remember his words, but that’s something I will never need. 

I walk away feeling content. 

When I die. People won’t need to reflect on the time they have had with me because it was enough and it matter to them and myself. And we aren’t just living in some complicated wasteland. 

I will not be like my ‘father’.

We won’t see each other when I die because where I’m going is not where he is. 

Hope you rot in hell old man knowing that I will do life and right by my future children far better then you ever did.