Written By Laura V.C
There were a lot of feelings that went with losing someone, but I had never lost anyone. I could write about the loss of a loved one, but I was writing for characters that weren’t me. I felt something for those characters I created to take the pain, but they weren’t real and therefore the pain wasn’t real, that was, until I came much too close to losing my father.
I was typing the second chapter to my first book, wondering how best to kill a character and that’s when I got the phone call from the hospital. It was a phone call that would change the way I thought about my father, and it was a wake up call when I needed one and didn’t know it. I couldn’t say exactly what I heard, but the words father, and car accident were what sunk in more then anything else. If the caller said anything more I wasn’t really listening. I was already planning my way to the hospital, thinking that maybe the call was a joke, cause my father couldn’t have been hurt. He was too strong, and much too young to be in any kind of fatal accident. I hung up the phone, not caring if the caller wasn’t finished talking. I was out the door, and climbing into my car like a robot that was built to do only those things. I was staring ahead to the road that would lead me to the hospital where my father was. He’s alright, I remember thinking over and over while memories of a past I had buried in my work came back to haunt me.
He was sitting on the couch in our small home, watching TV. He did that often when he came home from work. I didn’t know him well enough to know if he had friends or some kind of other life outside the house. I had come home that particular day and turned up the stairs to my room, my sanctuary. Usually my father said nothing, he would just let me go, cause the two of us did our own thing, and didn’t bother with each other, but this day of all days he spoke. “Why do you always go up to your room?”
“That’s where my sanctuary is, dad. I write up there,” I answered with a shrug.
“You never spend any of your time down here. You’re going to become a hermit,” he snapped, leaning forward.
I laughed. “Me? Look at you! You’re always sitting down here doing nothing.”
My father’s face went crimson, and I knew then that I had said the wrong thing. I wished I could’ve taken it back, but it was too late, and by that time I was also angry that he compared me to a hermit. “You have no idea what I do for you and this house and this whole family, Lydia. You think I do nothing, just lay around all day, well you’re wrong!”
“You didn’t give a damn about me, dad! You don’t even know me,” I stormed. This was going to turn into an all out war, I could feel it.
“I tried, but you’re always running off, hiding yourself behind your writing,”
“That’s crap,” I said heatedly. “You’re always working. You were always working, even when I was little you couldn’t spend any time with me. God, I hardly saw you.”
The two of us had angry eyes boring into each other, but there was a look of defeat and guilt that had started to show in the flashing hazel of his eyes. He knew I was right. He thought I had said it because I meant it, because I hated him, and didn’t think he was a good father, and that was the case that day when tempers were at the boiling point when fists were clenched and lips were pursed, but I didn’t hate him, and I did think he was a good father. I left home never telling him that and hiding myself in my writing, burying feelings of guilt inside characters I created just so I could share the burden.
But as I drove and the hospital loomed into view, I was no longer sharing the burden of ten years. I was feeling the guilt of a day when I should’ve simply apologized and set things right before I went off and never came back. I pulled into the parking lot, and sat there in an idle car, gripping the rear-view mirror with shaking fingers. I could feel a lump form in my throat. The car was closing in on me, reminding me of the day I had gone halfers with my father after losing our old car. We paid it every month until at last we owned it. He gave it to me when I moved out, but I didn’t say thank you. I didn’t say anything. I drove it away and never looked back. I should’ve looked back.
It was a lead footed walk through the parking lot, up the stairs and into the building I was starting to detest more with every step. I went to the front desk, and found that my voice was barely a husk when I spoke. “I’m here to see Gary Strong please.”
The lady seated there stared at me with suspicious eyes and without a trace of sympathy in her voice. “Who are you?”
“I’m his daughter, Lydia Strong.”
I nodded, “yes.”
