The Gift (497 hits)
Category: NoneRating: -0.43 on 35 reviews (Rate this item) (V)
Submitted by <monkeylove.at.easy.com> (View user info) at 2008-05-12 08:57:27 EDT
We laughed and talked about old times: about the wardrobes he had built me when I was small, about the huge table for my train set that slotted together without nails or screws and could be collapsed to zero and stashed away in the attic, about the chests of drawers. It's odd having furniture built for you by your father.
The memory of all that wood contrasted heavily with his surroundings now: the wipable plastic surfaces and chrome bed-rails of his hygienic geriatric ward. And it was hard to laugh, looking at that husk of a face, his spirit retreating ever inward for the final journey; retrenching like a fading tulip back into its bulb. The eyes ever deeper, the mouth hoarse, skin so grey it seemed barely alive. Cool to the kiss.
I have this theory that death in old age is not sudden, it comes gradually. Old people become invisible, unnoticeable, crawling along the pavement, then no longer on the street at all, and finally fading away upon their beds, losing substance, rocky headlands in a foggy twilight by the sea.
Father's twilight had lasted nine years, since a tobacco-induced stroke had cost him half his body. Sitting in his wheelchair, and nursed by my mother, he'd held out for his three score and ten, not wanting to be short changed, and faded out and in, and in a strange way enjoyed himself more than he had for a decade before. Being given the life-enhancing edge of raw mortality.
I hadn't known whether this was a regular fade out or the final credits until I'd walked in to the hospital room and seen his face, the grey tulip, and then I'd known. So it was hard to laugh, but we managed.
We talked about the dens he'd built me, with coffee table seats, the envy of the neighbourhood. About him driving me to the town centre every school morning, on his way to work in his van, him pipping the horn downstairs and me still in the flat gulping down my breakfast, only having got out of bed when I'd heard him close the front door.
And I told him that I loved him and heard he loved me. It wasn't easy but it was true.
I hadn't been intending to talk about my childhood either, but it seemed the right thing to do, to talk about our time of great connection. Though we'd never been to football matches together or been especially affectionate. He was always such a taciturn man. Built like an ape, a gorilla, quite literally. In his youth he'd nearly killed a man with a single blow. Childhood games of my-father-will-have-your-father repeated themselves ruttedly without me ever being invited to join in. When I was fourteen he could still lift me off the floor with one arm. And now here he was, frail as a spring icicle, his mottled scalp all visible beneath a veil of filigree white hair.
Our worlds diverged later in my teens. I had no problems with exams. Father had barely a piece of paper to his name. He couldn't help me with knowledge for school or university, and he'd already taught me how to saw properly and in which direction to use a plane.
Even his glorious tales of foreign lands, of Burma and India and the war against Japan, all told over the kitchen sink as we cleaned dishes together after one of mother's delicious meals, began to pale as I made my own journeys to even stranger lands. I even went to some of the places he'd mentioned, but saw them in a different sunlight, couldn't make the connection. Parallel worlds.
There was nothing wrong with his universe, it was just that I didn't share it, it wasn't mine. There was so little common in the way we saw thngs. I had to agree, one drunken evening, with a friend of mine who said that although it was nice to have humble origins and make your way in the world, it lost your parents their aged wisdom. They finished up with no gifts from the handbook of life to bestow. No gifts.
Things improved, in a way, after father's stroke. Along with his left hand side, all his emotional barriers were thrombosised away. He laughed and cried through the soaps on TV, dribbled, slept, and so very rarely raged against incapacity, against the injustice of it all. How he fought to enjoy this second innings in life; making jokes that half a mouth struggled to publish; tumbling through needs and emotions like a child. I looked after him from time to time; taking him for a roll, as we used to say; wiping his nose, his chin, his shitty bottom. How much closer to a human being can you get than wiping their effluent away?
I made a move, too fast, in the hospital room. Maybe too active - to cover my own emotions - too difficult to interpret. "My God," he said, as I settled down again. "For a moment there I thought you were leaving." Though I wasn't. But he said it so genially, as a private joke between us, summing up so much of what had gone before, that I would never want to erase it.
Yet of course I did have to leave some time. I had to say goodbye. Goodbye, goodbye. Final scenes can't go on forever. The curtains have to be drawn. And my world of Mars was taking me to Derbyshire in a few days. Unstoppable business, Martian statesmen. And so generously he knew that he and I had finished our business, sealed with blood, a handshake, a kiss, his runny nose wiped; my eyes lagoons and it was all right for me to go.
The lagoons leaked, of course, when I left him. Rib-aching sobs, quelled only by a walk in a childhood haunt, the familiar crows, the marsh grass, wet black-cotton soil, willows dropping catkins so to grow. Only then did I too know it had been all right for me to leave.
I went to Derbyshire. My father died, still untempted by dreams of an afterlife. Half the world and I turned out for the funeral, so sad to see one good man less. And then I really knew.
To leave no trace of ill-feeling behind in a soul, no deathbed jibes, no might-have-beens, no wish-I'd-saids; all loose ends tied by you dear father, by you, with humour and good grace and such... nobility. To know all this is possible, can be done so well.
User Reviews
Submitted by HurtByTheSun (user info) at 2008-05-16 09:12:25 EDT (#)
Ranking: -2
VANQUISHED BIATCH!
Submitted by F.J.Bell (user info) at 2008-05-16 09:00:31 EDT (#)
Ranking: -2
Let me guess...
*Logs into uber*
*Notices rating has plummeted. Blames HBTS*
*Realises plagiarism has been found out*
*Vomits*
*Is too much of a pussy to face the music and disappears into the ether*
Knob-cheese.
Submitted by TheUniter (user info) at 2008-05-13 12:33:51 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
Submitted by JonnyX (user info) at 2008-05-13 02:50:59 EDT (#)
Ranking: -2
No Comment
Submitted by Bubba2341 (user info) at 2008-05-12 18:51:31 EDT (#)
Ranking: -2
Fushing feef.
Submitted by Bubba2341 (user info) at 2008-05-12 18:51:11 EDT (#)
Ranking: -2
Fucking Thief.
Submitted by Berty (user info) at 2008-05-12 12:56:50 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
Submitted by Phallic_Cymbals (user info) at 2008-05-12 11:17:34 EDT (#)
Ranking: -2
*puts on exorcist hat and gloves*
ROBERT "BOBETH" BERG, I BANISH YOU FROM UBERSITE IN ALL YOUR INCARNATIONS. LEAVE THIS PLACE AND NEVER RETURN. YOU ARE NOT WELCOME HERE. NOT WELCOME.
*hurls bible*
-------------
Haw Haw
Submitted by lostnphound (user info) at 2008-05-12 12:39:55 EDT (#)
Ranking: -2
Still silent after you're literary Tom Foolery, eh?
I assume you've taken someone else's ball and run home.
Submitted by Ballare (user info) at 2008-05-12 11:41:21 EDT (#)
Ranking: -2
No Comment
Submitted by HurtByTheSun (user info) at 2008-05-12 11:33:58 EDT (#)
Ranking: -2
So, five out of thirteen of your posts are stolen. I can't really be bothered to find the rest, where'd you get them from?
Submitted by Phallic_Cymbals (user info) at 2008-05-12 11:17:34 EDT (#)
Ranking: -2
*puts on exorcist hat and gloves*
ROBERT "BOBETH" BERG, I BANISH YOU FROM UBERSITE IN ALL YOUR INCARNATIONS. LEAVE THIS PLACE AND NEVER RETURN. YOU ARE NOT WELCOME HERE. NOT WELCOME.
*hurls bible*
Submitted by LittleMonster (user info) at 2008-05-12 11:11:13 EDT (#)
Ranking: -2
I have a lot of unexplored rage that I feel I could vent beautifully at this wanker.
Submitted by HurtByTheSun (user info) at 2008-05-12 11:06:46 EDT (#)
Ranking: -2
Just so you know dude, I'm at a loose and and finding all his other 'writing', it's quite fun. Check his User Info for the sordid truth.
Submitted by F.J.Bell (user info) at 2008-05-12 10:59:33 EDT (#)
Ranking: -2
This guy is obviously a talentless hack with nothing original to say for himself.
EI???
Submitted by HurtByTheSun (user info) at 2008-05-12 10:50:04 EDT (#)
Ranking: -2
http://www.ubersite.com/m/116482#2708512
========
From now on I'm just going to assume that everything you've written is stolen.
Submitted by HurtByTheSun (user info) at 2008-05-12 10:43:44 EDT (#)
Ranking: -2
ANSWER US YOU PATHETIC SHAM OF A 'WRITER'!
Submitted by F.J.Bell (user info) at 2008-05-12 10:31:48 EDT (#)
Ranking: -2
How many of your other posts don't belong to you?
=========
I was wondering that too.
Submitted by lostnphound (user info) at 2008-05-12 10:29:56 EDT (#)
Ranking: -2
Did you really think someone wouldn't find out about your little copy/paste job???
How many of your other posts don't belong to you?
Submitted by HurtByTheSun (user info) at 2008-05-12 10:10:05 EDT (#)
Ranking: -2
http://www.ubersite.com/m/116654#2708255
=========
RE: The above.
This is a fantastic story. IT'S A SHAME YOU DIDN'T FUCKING WELL WRITE IT.
Submitted by HurtByTheSun (user info) at 2008-05-12 10:05:50 EDT (#)
Ranking: -2
The best part about that comment is this bit:
"I thought you had used a smilar idea before, I could be very wrong."
Bwahahahahahaha.
At least you've got fucking ideas dude.
Submitted by Linus (user info) at 2008-05-12 10:05:33 EDT (#)
Ranking: -2
What they said.
Submitted by F.J.Bell (user info) at 2008-05-12 10:05:04 EDT (#)
Ranking: -2
And only this morning he's telling me to write my own material...
http://www.ubersite.com/m/116655#2708271
Plonker.
Submitted by HurtByTheSun (user info) at 2008-05-12 10:02:56 EDT (#)
Ranking: -2
Way to be a rip off. Cunt.
Submitted by LittleMonster (user info) at 2008-05-12 09:57:55 EDT (#)
Ranking: -2
God I'm a pillock sometimes.
Ta for the link
Submitted by shadow (user info) at 2008-05-12 09:55:52 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
http://www.foxglove.co.uk/shorts/gift.html
Submitted by F.J.Bell (user info) at 2008-05-12 09:55:48 EDT (#)
Ranking: -2
Skrapmetal linked it in the comment before mine, blondie.
Submitted by LittleMonster (user info) at 2008-05-12 09:51:21 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
ooooooooooh. FJ, wheres it from, I shall accordingly change rating. Link please!
Submitted by F.J.Bell (user info) at 2008-05-12 09:42:56 EDT (#)
Ranking: -2
Christ you changed 'California' to 'Derbyshire'...
Auto plagiarism -2DIE
Submitted by skrapmetal (user info) at 2008-05-12 09:38:20 EDT (#)
Ranking: 1
http://www.foxglove.co.uk/shorts/gift.html
Is this you, or...
Submitted by Linus (user info) at 2008-05-12 09:34:30 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by CarterPFly (user info) at 2008-05-12 09:12:34 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Moving and very well written.
Submitted by DonovanMD (user info) at 2008-05-12 09:11:56 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by LittleMonster (user info) at 2008-05-12 09:11:48 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by F.J.Bell (user info) at 2008-05-12 09:05:53 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Not terribly well written, but touching enough.
Submitted by earth_collapse (user info) at 2008-05-12 08:58:47 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
This was really fantastic.