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Thorny Heart 800 words (revised!)
The last time, he was wearing bolognaise. You could always tell what the old man had been eating, as some of it always ended up on his shirt.
When mother was alive she’d cajole us up with the phrase “C’mon! First up – best dressed!” Money was tight - and my brothers and I shared what clothes we had, but I can still remember watching the back of my fathers’ immaculate suit striding out each evening to his club. He took enormous pride in his appearance.
You could say he was a quiet, dignified man. Tall and purposeful. Silently unmoveable. And hell wasn’t he stubborn? But I don’t think he ever raised his hands or voice to us - although we probably gave him no reason to. Maybe he found us to be an avoidable inconvenience, because although memories can be being selective, now that I think of it, my clearest are of that smart suit walking away.
Little wonder that his sons shared his characteristics. Introverted, insular, and ferociously self-sufficient. They say that, in the autumn of your years, you reap what you sow. His harvest brought him apathy and a malignant neglect, whose shadow extended further than anyone could have imagined.
In the warmer months, of which there are less and less these days it seems, he used to tend the gardens and mow the lawns. The garden was beautiful, and each morning he quietly marshalled the lines in smart military fashion. Later he’d take lunch and dinner at the bowls club, where he and his friends drank and compared the best cigars. We couldn’t have seen the gout coming; we really could have predicted heart disease.
When his health failed it happened suddenly and for a year or two, shortness or breath and the effects of angina meant that he also lost his enthusiasm. He probably asked for help, but I doubt we were listening.
He started to find it difficult to care for himself, and then difficult to care at all. There was a transformation. His dirty house, his sticky walls, his cigar-smoke stained windows. There was cat hair everywhere and the children didn’t like the smell or the greasy patches on the carpet that surrounded his armchair.
Over time he began to let himself go, and privately we each started to let go too, and so the gaps between our visits became ever increasing as the years passed.
It got progressively easy to miss visits. At first I called to make guilty apologies, but each successive call felt progressively easier to make. I realised that he’d resigned himself to seeing less and less of me and my family, but I hadn’t appreciated that contact between my father and my other brothers was diminishing just as rapidly.
Some people just are not that good at social interaction and he couldn’t help being ignorantly obnoxious.
Like the time he visited my brother and his wife at hospital after the birth of their daughter. The old man patronisingly ruffled my brother’s hair and amiably pointed out that “there’s nothing like the birth of your first child, son. Savour this moment, because nothing will make you feel like this ever again.” I believe that there’s some merit in the observation, but the fact that the brother in question was brother number three was lost on father. The sweeping art of being generally offensive is a thing of marvel. Clumsy oafishness and casual insult are unwelcome allies of the solitary. One example... but, in our mitigation, there were many other events and circumstances that also ought to be taken into account.
So as his legs stiffened, if he found it hard to ask for our help, we found it easy to ignore the clues. Well, we had our own homes and families to tend.
These are the boundaries we tend, between our hearts and those of our kin. Some people build a garden, but my father built a thorny maze.
And so he sat and he waited - his eyes hooded by pink and dry-flaked skin, conservative ideals and stubbornness. His finger hovered over the buttons of the only worlds he could control… his TV, his phone, his internet account. Time passed, the snows came and went, thorny fingers found sustenance in the earth.
Brambles are hellish things once they take hold of a garden. I think the greenhouse probably went first. By the time I was aware of the problem it was difficult to make out the house at all – it’s as though the whole plot has been exchanged for a stretch of wild woodland, complete with rare nesting birds.
The phone isn’t working, and there’s no sign of the old fellah... hell, there's no sign of humanity at all - never mind the buildings, nature has taken it all back.
The contractors have been working for two days and they’ve found the path, but it’s going to be tough work. Who would have thought it? These brambles are a prodigy of their kind. Silent, fast, and resilient under attack. Stubborn, immoveable tenacity never stood a chance.
I’m sure they’ll find him… I wonder if he’s still waiting? I suppose I should feel guilty but it feels like a natural conclusion…
Last edited by ross : 06-09-2008 at 10:41 PM.
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