The Visitor (4+Final)

I couldn’t attend the funeral. I just couldn’t possibly. The night he died I didn’t sleep. In fact, I have rarely slept since. My body simply wanted to keep up with the restlessness of its mind. So the night he died I ran away. I ran because I would be lost without him. I ran because I wanted to outrun my minds anguish. I ran because my body could take me anywhere.

I admit that leaving my frail mother alone was irresponsible to say the least. The money I stole from her purse, however, was unforgivable. You see, I couldn’t live with her now. Not after he was gone. How could I possibly even look at her after what she had done? In some way, I believe she understood why I had to leave. My real disgrace though, lies in my father’s body being unvisited by his only child.

The Garden

They had this garden, my parents. I remember lilies.

The garden itself was no sanctuary. Constructed from those sinless lilies, heavy industry rose in the attempted creation of beauty. It was a ground of worn slab from which dull and half destroyed pots were set upon. Acting as engines, the pots’ endogenous seedlings overgrew and suffocated the very sight of the other plants, cracking their containers until they had to be replanted into the raised bedding. They were overfed and with consistent cuttings taken from my lackey-like mother, who was so intoxicated by some past dream of her own father. The garden’s entropy became a family curse.

My mother had been ill for sometime. Her energy just went and she was left weakened by something no one really came to understand. At least I was never told. It was like the life was being sucked slowly out of her. She never wanted to get out of bed. Often I could hear her crying behind closed doors, while my father waited at her side. He would tell me not to enter whenever I knocked.
It didn’t seem like there was any pain, but to be honest I really knew nothing. The garden, as a result of her illness, became my father’s responsibility. She would crow orders pressuring him to act on the thing she wasn’t duly able to fulfil.

He was somewhat older than my mother but by how much I never truly knew. The work was strenuous, too much for a retired engineer. Between the weeding, cuttings and constant watering, my father had taken on something his body would not be able to sustain. It was his craving to fix things that made it impossible for him to stop. The garden became a calling, but of what exactly, I don’t know. All the while, my half broken mother would overlook his motions through slit curtains and howled her orders.

After some time, my father began to respond to the lilies and not her. The look of new love was in his eyes. He couldn’t wait for the calling whistle of those luscious petals whenever the wind swept through that horrid garden of theirs. Under my father’s attention, the garden grew as much as it had for mother if not more. He was equally ambitious. Climbing in tiers, he created a layered setting of a creamy white paradise.
The first watering of the day preceded his cup of tea and toast for breakfast. In the garden, he would stand silently as he scanned what work needed doing or whether any of the plants needed preening.

At seven o‘clock, he prepared mother’s breakfast of coffee, eggs and toast. He would then shower, change into his gardener’s attire of old pyjama bottoms and a Happy Days tee shirt and set about his days work with a plan of attack already set in his mind.

I actually liked watching him work in the garden. There was something quite serene about his routine if a little odd. At times of deep contemplation, however, I would also find it quite unnerving. It wasn’t his fault of course. Not really. He had worked under people his entire life. He took orders amending parts here or cables there etc. Always watched, his every move was supervised. Here, mother presented a similar scenario, but as she had grown weaker his autonomy over the garden had become stronger. The real problem was that his garden presented no hopeful seedlings of life beyond lilies. It may just has well have been hers and I always felt that he had wasted an opportunity to stamp new life into the bored soil.
I believe my mother knew she had lost the garden to him. I believe that is why she gave him the impossible task. Why she gave him a half-broken ladder. Why she wanted him to feel some of her pain. And he did. The old man fell. His fine bones cracked and never recovered. He fell into depression and was later caught by cancer.
I have learnt in life that eyes are the most telling instrument. A struggling eye can easily misread, and mine have often failed me. I am sorry for any pain I caused you. For I hold you so deeply in my veins where there is no escape, only a love so tender that every trickle of blood is a tear in memory of you.

The Visitor.

‘Someone is here to see you.’

Some time ago now, my death letter arrived. It was as simple as that. I knew what it was the moment I saw it slide its way beneath my chamber door and rest itself against my foot. When I picked it up, I noted that it was surprisingly light for something so dark.

‘Hello.’