Abyss

Drowning

I remember waking and feeling a thick layer of sweat on my skin, almost as if I had awoken from a nightmare, except this was my nightmare and there was no one to save me from it. It was a haze. I remember staring at myself in the mirror and applying my make up like it was any other day. I tied my hair back and pulled on my clothes. We drove silently and I hadn’t realised that we were there until my mother was knocking on the window of the car asking if I was ready to come out.

Crowds of people were approaching and offering their condolences, as if that would ease my suffering. People all around me were crying and then I was asked if I wanted to see him one last time. Up until that moment I had forgotten why we were here and then like a raging fire my insides began to burn. I looked at my mother through teary eyes and just shook my head, for the first time in my life I was at a loss for words. With shaky hands I gave her the letter I had written him, the letter that I had been clutching onto from the moment I left home that morning. I felt a wave of guilt wash over me as I refused to say goodbye to my father, to gaze upon his face for the final time. Then I remembered the summer we spent camping along the beach, and the way his skin glowed a faint shade of brown in the sun and his smile covered the entire surface of his face. This was how I wanted to remember him, full of life, and always, always smiling.

I watched as the people who loved my father filled the room. Aunts, uncles, friends, even co-workers, all here to pay their respects. None of this mattered though because resting yet a few steps in front of me was my fathers coffin. This revelation rocked me to the core and I sat, I listened, I cried and I ached.

I learnt things about my father that day that I had never known before. I learnt that one summer he and his friends decided to go camping and shortly after arriving got stuck in the mud and proceeded to spend the next four days drinking and playing cards, only after running out of alcohol did they attempt to move the car. People laughed, people cried, and people remembered. It was clear that my father was a man who was widely adored, although, as I sat quietly I realised that no one else in this room would ever know the type of man he was to me.

He was the man who blasted ACDC in the living room while playing air guitar. He was the man who enjoyed playing dress ups with his daughters. He was the man who made an awful cup of tea but a surprisingly good cake. Faults and all, he was the man who made my world go around.

Shortly after the ceremony finished we made our way back to the car, I turned to my mother and asked, with complete seriousness, how would dad get back. That was when it finally hit home. He wasn’t coming back.

It rained for an entire week after my father was gone. I wondered if it would ever stop raining. At 16 I felt as though no matter how hard I tried to stay afloat I just couldn’t seem to do so. I was drowning.