3
April 21, 2017 - 214 words
My dad was a tough man. Actually he was a brutal son of a bitch. Crying was for the weak. I never saw him crack or break. Learned and well-read, he hid it behind a curtain of fury that parted at the slightest breeze. Once I skinned my knee and he knocked me across the head just for wincing in pain. I learned real fast to bury those feelings. During my adolescence he was not a man so much as a force. When he saw I was taking an interest in philosophy he would cite Taoist paradoxes, Sartre, and strange expressions to me. I suppose it was his way of encouraging me to keep learning. I still maintained a distant fear of him. My sister and I both did. We weren’t a close family.
When he got cancer in his early 50s I knew he would beat it. This tough dog had survived the war, a bullet to the chest, two car accidents, the country’s advertising and my sister’s suicide. When he called me into his hospital room I knew I would hear some cocky bravado and his confident voice braying: “See you when I get out” or some wisdom like “Journey’s just starting, boy.” But instead he whispered, “I don’t want to die.”