A Father's Love

I can’t define a moment in my life that deftly divided my father and I. The rift between us seems to have always been there, ever constant. My father was a traveling musician, going on long tours of grand stadiums and attending the odd awards show. He was very successful, having been in the same band for almost twenty years, and thus, rightly famous in our hometown. Often people stopped him on the street for pictures and autographs. No one could have foreseen that I would be his downfall. The man could navigate a concerto just as easily as Metallica’s most complicated solos; he could always impress my mother and could always produce a smile; but I was just a disappointment to him.

I had absolutely no interest whatsoever in music. Sure, I listened to it on the radio, but it didn’t have a siren song for me the way it did for him. We didn’t talk; had nothing in common. He loved his music like I loved my sports. I couldn’t talk to him about my baseball and soccer teams and he couldn’t talk to me about the “rockin’” performance last week in Madison Square Gardens.

As I got older, around ten years old, it finally started to sink in that our relationship wasn’t healthy. I knew it would be up to me to change something, so I bit the bullet and asked my dad to teach me guitar. He was ecstatic and insisted on giving me his favourite classical guitar with nylon strings so worn they didn’t hurt my callous-free fingers at all. That first day, he taught me how to play G and C; two chords he said were the most common in the entire music industry.

I was happy for a different reason. My father was actually speaking to me of his own free will and doing so happily. He seemed genuinely pleased at my newfound interest in music. We progressed, learning to chat amiably to each other as he taught me more chords and how to read tablature and sheet music. I wasn’t half-bad at the guitar, sometimes downright pleasurable to hear with the right song. It looked as though I’d inherited a bit of my father’s musical talent after all. I thought I could finally hear his siren song.

He was on tour, late in September, and had just finished a show in North Carolina. The tour bus was very basic, a couple of bunks, a fridge, a microwave, and a couple of couches, not too over the top. His band mates Randy, Jake, Peter, and Brian lived in the next city over, so they always got dropped off before he made it home. The driver, Eddie, was never one to turn down an animated conversation or a sing-along oldie radio station and was doing both at the same time that day. Eddie dropped his phone under the seat and before glancing at the road, attempted to retrieve it. He didn’t see the sharp turn up ahead and neither did my father who was napping on the couch. They punched through the barrier at highway speed, almost 90 mph. Since Eddie was at the front of the bus, he died on impact, but thankfully, Dad survived thanks to the rescue team’s prowess with the Jaws of Life.

When my mother and I heard the news, we rushed to the hospital, fighting through crowds of well wishers that were stationed outside the white doors. I was scared. I was thirteen, my father was in surgery and I was shit-scared. I’d only just gotten to know him; I couldn’t lose him now. My mother and I took turns, alternating between a sickening nervous pacing and simply collapsing into chairs to sob. Every once in a while, the pacing and sobbing wouldn’t work for Mom, and she’d track me down and wrap me in a strangling hug. After several hours of this, the doctor arrived in a small flourish. He announced that Dad was out of surgery and that we could see him now. Before he left, he whispered softly to my mother who promptly burst into fresh tears. Still, she took my hand in hers and pulled me down the barren hallway to the ICU, failing miserably at maintaining her composure. It was only when we entered his room that I figured out why.

Dad was lying on the bed, propped up with pillows and gashes covering every inch of him. He had the thin cotton blanket draped over him, but I could see the extra padding of bandages wound around his chest. His eyes were closed, and his chest was rising and falling far too shallowly to be healthy. I dropped my mother’s hand and ran to Dad’s bedside, taking his hand in mine even though I’d never done so before. I squeezed, just as they did on all of the TV shows, and waited for him to squeeze back. I did it over and over again until my mother noticed what I was doing. She started in on a whole new round of tears.

“Oh, honey, he won’t squeeze you back,” she whispered softly, walking toward me and kneeling down beside me. She set her hands on my waist in a comforting motion.

“Why not?” I demanded, continuing to squeeze, but doing so with more force.

“Son, Daddy can’t feel anything from the neck down,” she started crying hysterically, reaching and trapping my hands in her own to pull me into a bone-shattering hug. “Your father’s paralyzed, Kevin.”

Paralyzed. We’d learned what paralysis was in school, of course. We’d learned that you rarely got through it, that most of the people who had it would rather be dead. I’d never have been able to guess that someday, my dad would have it, and have it bad at that. Dad didn’t wake up while we were there. The doctor said he was on heavy medication, but then he whispered again to my mother and feared he was just trying to be nice to me. After a couple hours of resting by his sickbed, Mom couldn’t take it anymore. She beckoned to me from the door and together we left the hospital, bound for home.

Mom went through the rest of the day in a trance mechanically, automatically doing everything she normally did, for it was after eight at night. Her face was blank and emotionless as she folded laundry. Her hands were moving jerkily as she tucked me into bed and I knew I wouldn’t be able to sleep, not tonight. I could hear her roaming around the kitchen restlessly, sometimes moving a couple things around, other times sitting in a chair for a moment. Finally, I heard her sit on the couch and turn on the TV, louder than usual. My curiosity, worry, and dread compelled me to action.

I crept out of my bed and bedroom to the top of the stairs. I could hear muffled sobs and I knew that it was worse than I feared. Softly, I inched my way down the stairs until I could just make out the outlines of the couch and the TV.

Mom was curled up on the cushion, knees tight against her chest, shoulders hunched forward, crying with abandon. There was a box of tissues beside her, and she sniffled often while I watched. It was then that I noticed the picture of my Dad. It usually rested on the mantle, but Mom was crushing it to her chest as she wept, and I couldn’t do anything. I was frozen. I couldn’t go to her and comfort her, but I couldn’t force myself to leave and let her grieve in solitude either.

Mom took me out of school for the next week and we spent every available second at my father’s side. We talked to him and Mom fussed over him, even though he was still asleep. On the last day of the week, I was beyond antsy, but Mom made me bring my guitar, one that my parents had given me for my birthday to play him a song. And I did play for him, I made sure to hit all the notes and use the right amount of force for the strums, but still he didn’t wake. When we got home that night, Mom finally confessed that Dad was in a coma and he might never wake up.

That night, right after she’d tucked me in to bed, I found myself pulling my body from under the covers and picking up my guitar. I don’t know what I’d initially set out to do with it, but as soon as I held its familiarly worn neck, I gripped it in both hands and brought it down as hard as I could on the pale wooden floor. It splintered into dozens of pieces, variously sized, and exploded across the floor. It was supposed to wake him up, my playing of the guitar. It was supposed to sing its siren song so that he could hear it. It was supposed to make him better! I listened as Mom thundered up the steps and barged in without knocking. She gasped at the sight before her, but she couldn’t find any words.

“I’m done with the guitar,” I said, finding the words for her. I bent to pick up some fragments and tucked them in my trashcan. Mom stood still for another moment before kneeling down to help me. She tucked me in again, but this time I fell asleep without destroying anything else.

Dad was in a coma for five years. He missed the majority of my puberty years, and with time Mom and I learned to live without him. I went back to school and focused on schoolwork, but I couldn’t bring myself to do more sports than was necessary for gym class. I missed him, despite it all. I missed our afternoon guitar lessons; the only times I felt that he was proud of me.

I couldn’t keep the guitar out of my mind, though. Every time I went to visit my father at the hospital, I was reminded of a song I’d learned to play, or a technique I’d mastered. It got so bad that one day, when I was over at my friend Joel’s, I picked up his father’s guitar and just started to play. I was extremely rusty, but it was easily recognizable beneath the surface. I picked the notes with a tiny bit more force than necessary, and had to slow it down in places when there was a hard chord progression, but at the end Joel gave a little clap.

“You’re not half bad, Kevin,” he smiled as he took the guitar back from me. I felt a pang in my chest as her graceful body left my fingers, but then it was gone and Joel was holding the guitar, getting ready to play. Yet, he didn’t just play, he sang, too.

“He woke up from dreaming and put on his shoes, started making his way past two in the morning. He hasn’t been sober for days. Leaning now, into the breeze, remembering Sunday, he falls to his knees. They had breakfast together, but two eggs don’t last like the feeling of what he needs,” his strums were perfectly spaced, the custom picking he inserted at places worked well with the initial structure of the song. It was beautiful.

“That was pretty amazing, Joel. Where’d you learn to sing?” I asked, still slightly mesmerized that my friend of eight or nine years never once told me he could sing or play guitar.

“Thanks, man, I practice everyday,” he grinned at me from ear to ear.

“It shows,” I nodded, smiling like a fool. A short silence spanned between us, each of us lost in our own worlds. Joel broke it.

“You know, we could do this,” he suggested, staring right into my eyes.

“Do what?” I replied dumbly.

“Music,” he gestured to the guitar. “We could start a band!” His eyes lit up in excitement, and the energy flowing through him was impossible to ignore.

“Really? But we don’t have a drummer or a bassist and we’d need songs-“

“Dude, we could be a duo guitar band, and I admit, I have a couple songs we could start working on,” he started rambling on about how we could get signed and tour around the world, but I’ll be honest, I zoned out. Did I really want to follow in my father’s footsteps? Did I want to be that guy and live on a tour bus nine months of the year? Part of me was raring to go, but the other part of me shirked away from it. After all, look where it got Dad. I shook my head, clearing my mind to make a decision.

“Okay, Joel, I’ll make a band with you. Two conditions though,” I paused and he nodded for me to go on, too excited to sit still. “First, you can never tell my parents about this. Second, we have to have practice at your house and I’ll need to borrow a guitar,” he was nodding excessively, and I couldn’t help but smile at his childish antics.

“Sure thing. Want to start now?” he asked, getting up to go get another guitar.

“Yeah, that’d be fine,” I nodded. He left the room, scurrying downstairs to do God knows what.

“It’s too late to apologize, it’s too late.” I stood up to slip my phone out of my pocket and flipped it open without looking at the ID. Pacing, I said, “Hello?”

“Kevin? You have to come home now,” my mother wasted no time in getting to the point.

“What? Why?” I inquired, slightly confused.

“Come home now. He’s awake,” was all she said before she hung up.

The phone clattered to the floor, my mind swam in dizzying confusion and my heart thumped in my throat. He’s awake. My knees shuddered for a moment before they gave out and hurtled me onto the bed. My eyes were wide open, but I couldn’t see anything. My heart thumped louder, ringing in my ears. For the first time in my life, I fainted.

I woke up to Joel staring down at me and also to something slapping against my cheek at regular intervals. My face hurt like a bitch and my vision was blurry. Joel’s face was the most prominent, but in the dim background I was quite sure I could see my Mom peering down at me as well.

“ ‘Lo?” I muttered groggily. I had a massive headache, but slowly my thoughts started to straighten out.

“Kevin, are you okay?” Mom pushed Joel out of the way and started patting my cheek and brushing my hair.

“M’fine, Mom, really,” I assured her and then slowly sat up, feeling the blood rush. That’s when I realized that I was not in fact lying on Joel’s bed. Rather, I was lying in the middle of a hospital corridor on a borrowed bed. I looked over to Joel in utter perplexity.

“I didn’t know what happened to you when I found you conked out on the bed like that, so I phoned your mother and she told me to bring you here. The doctor had a look at you and says you’re fine, so we thought we’d just let you wake up naturally and all,” he shrugged.

He’s awake.

I looked at my Mom, “Can I see him now?”

“Room 112, Kevin. Be careful, he’s still a little disoriented,” she warned and pointed to the right corridor.

I made my way down the hall past other rooms where families were gathered, laughing and crying with joy all at once. Immediately I sensed that that would not be the case for my father and I. It’d been five years, we’d have to start all over again. I spotted room 112, a much nicer room than the one he’d been in since the accident. There was a TV, a radio, a bathroom and two chairs by his bed. He was lying on the bed, staring at the TV screen and didn’t hear me approach.

“Hi,” I murmured quietly, standing with my hands in my pockets at the foot of his bed. He turned at the sudden sound.

“Kevin?” he asked, astonishment colouring his voice. I nodded my affirmative. “You’ve grown so much; you hardly look like yourself,” his voice had a dreamy quality, like he was still on some ferociously nice drugs.

“Yeah, well, it’s been a few years,” I shifted my weight to my other foot. I shouldn’t feel nervous in front of my father, but I couldn’t help the feelings of discomfort flowing through my veins.

“Right,” his eyes went glassy for a moment. “Sorry it took so long for me to wake up, Kev,” he said softly. I stared at him, uncomprehendingly at first. Then I suddenly remembered. For him, our relationship hadn’t grown apart in five years. In his mind, I was still thirteen years old instead of eighteen, and for him, yesterday he was on tour.

“It’s okay, Dad,” it wasn’t his fault after all.

“They’re going to let me come home in a few days, you know,” he smiled. “You can show me what you’ve been up to lately.”

“Yeah, Dad, that sounds like a plan,” I turned to leave.

“Love you, Kevin,” he called after me. I stopped where I was and slowly spun around to face him. His face fell a slight bit at the utter surprise on my face, but still I managed to squeak out, “You, too, Dad,” before making a run for the door.

The next few weeks were like this, I was always dancing around Dad, trying to get used to having him back in my life. I went to Joel’s almost everyday after school, after all, it’s not like there was any homework to do in senior year. We played and wrote and called club and bar owners to give us a gig. Mostly we got turned down because we didn’t have any drums in our ensemble, but we didn’t let it deter us. We just kept at it harder than ever.

It was eleven o’clock on a Sunday morning and I woke up to the sound of my phone.

“Yeah?” I asked, sleep masking my voice.

“Dude! We got a gig!” Joel’s voice was extremely loud in my ear. Then I processed what he said. I shot up in bed, grasping the phone tightly.

“Are you serious?!” I yelled happily.

“As a heart attack! It’s tonight at eight, you can come, right?” he asked, his voice suddenly dropping to worry.

“Of course, I can come, dude, this is excellent!” I breathed excitedly.

“I know, I’ll pick you up in an hour so we can rehearse and stuff.”

“Sweet, see you soon,” I grinned as I hung up the phone and I’ll be damned, I actually whistled as I took my morning shower. I dressed quickly before bounding downstairs.

“I’m going to see Joel,” I called out as I slipped on my shoes.

“When will you be back?” Mom replied from the kitchen.

“Probably around nine. We’re going to hang out and stuff,” I shrugged as I opened the door.

“Be careful, son,” Dad instructed from the couch.

“Always.” I darted out the door and into Joel’s waiting Honda.

We nodded our hellos, both too busy thinking about the coming night to talk coherently to each other. We got to his house, headed straight to the garage and started to play.

After about an hour of excellent work, we took a break for some lunch. His mom makes the best mac and cheese you’ve ever had. It is literally to die for it’s so amazing.

“So when’s our gig?” I asked before shoveling spoonfuls of awesomeness into my mouth.

“Five. We have to be there at 4:30 to set up though,” he responded, stuffing his face with food, too. When we’d finished, it was close to four, so we packed our guitars, cords, amps, microphones, and microphone stands into the trunk of his car, and after Joel said goodbye to his mom, we were heading to our first gig!

We arrived five minutes early and were ushered in by the owner.

“Hey, aren’t you Rick Thornberg’s kid? You look just like him” he asked when he saw me. I nodded my head. “Kid,” he looked at Joel, “if you’d started with ‘my partner is Kevin Thornberg, Rick Thornberg’s son’ no one in this town would have turned you down,” he chuckled before showing us where to go.

But that’s exactly why we agreed not to tell anyone. We didn’t want our supposed success to come down to my father’s fame. It just seemed wrong, and we wanted to do this ourselves.

We set up in silence, but personally I was battling a whole new wave of nervousness. My palms were clammy, I was sweating bullets, my mind was working through the many hundreds of doom possibilities. And then it was time. The owner came by again to tell us to get our butts on stage. We walked up the few steps and went to our respective mic stands. I wasn’t a singer, but I could hold enough of a tune to sing back up for Joel when we thought it was necessary.

“Hello there all you sexy people,” Joel’s voice sounded calm and confidant. He gave a little wink to the ladies in front. “We are Mayven Haven and we will be entertaining you tonight,” he slipped on his guitar and started to play the intro chords to our favourite song, “Second Chance”. I waited a bar, until he started singing, before picking out the lead line, adding hammer-ons and pull-offs, doing the few slides we wrote in. I looked out at the crowd; they weren’t booing us. In fact, they seemed to be enjoying themselves.

When we reached the chorus, I let go of my guitar, letting it hang against my body and started clapping along to the catchy chorus. To my immense relief, a bunch of people started clapping with me and I gave a brilliant smile before going back to playing the song.

It was such a rush, being up there, playing for people. They cheered when we finished our set and we were smothered by guys and girls alike who wanted to know what our tour schedule and daily gig nights were.

“They’ll be here every Friday and Sunday night,” the owner boomed through his establishment, a shit-eating grin on his face. Joel and I turned to look at each other, shock on our faces, before meeting in the loudest high-five that joint has ever seen. We laughed and chatted with people. There were a few guys standing in the back with a man in a wheelchair who just seemed to be waiting, biding their time.

Eventually, the horde of adoring fans left and Jim, the owner, was getting ready to close up. We packed up all our gear and started heading out when I recognized the people at the back. I almost dropped my guitar.

“Mom? Dad?” I asked, utterly bewildered. Mom rushed toward me, before enveloping me in a hug.

“You two were so good,” she gushed, before pulling Joel into the hug as well.

“Thanks, Mrs. Thornberg,” Joel said before extricating himself from my mother’s clutches.

“Yeah, Mom, thanks,” I said before turning to Dad. Our set had finished almost 15 minutes ago, but I could see the remnants of tears on his cheeks.

“Good job, son. Good job,” he congratulated. I laid down my guitar and knelt down beside his chair. I hugged him, for the first time since the accident, I hugged my father.

“I’m proud of you.”

He comes to every single one of my gigs now. We even had our tour bus tricked out so he could ride with us. He’s a pretty good travel companion, and loves giving advice to Joel and I. His paralysis is slowing getting better, sometimes he can move his shoulders, but I think he’s accepted the fact he’ll never be able to play the guitar again. That’s okay with him though, because I’m playing for him. He still gets his siren song, it’s just a song he shares with me.

I wrote a song for him a couple years back, and Joel and I play it every single gig. It’s called “A Father’s Love” and a few other people have covered it. I like having him around on tours with us, and sometimes Mom even joins us, though it’s really not her cup of tea. It makes him feel young again, I think, and that’s totally fine with us.

He no longer stands in the back of the venues. We always make sure he’s got a nice little spot at the side of the stage and more often than not we get him on stage with us right after his song. He’s always got a tear for me when I play, his pride so overwhelming it leaks out through the corners of his eyes.

My Dad and I were never close. I learned the guitar so that we would have something in common. Now, he cries every time I play.

And I wouldn’t have it any other way.