I have been doing this blog long enough that I think it is time to try a short story which I hope won’t bore you.
I just though of it this week and I won’t bore you with any more than three pages, I think of episodic journal.
I walked down the stairs of my home one by one. Each step was an accomplishment. As I maneuvered down I had the complete concentration of a scrum, head down, eyes fixated on each tread and riser, and when I finally arrived in the stairwell, the sense of the ball being out and the breaking up of the scrum as I looked up and around to follow the action of the back play.
In this case I confronted the hard man, my father, long since dead, sitting in the chair that I had inherited from him.
Shock.
WTF!!!
This scenario sort of wakes one up.
“It’s time to go, son.” he said matter of factly.
Funny I knew just what he meant.
It was my end. My father was taking me out. Trust me, it made some sort of insane sense, considering.
When one meets one’s father at the end of the line , one can rightly imagine that that there will be kindness. That is what I thought having no experience in the matter at hand.
“Dad,” I responded. “Let me do something before we go. If I write this down and hide in my papers, well, I will have accomplished the one thing I set out to do. I will have written something. My daughter will find this story of my death and surely she will find it interesting, fascinating enough to submit it for publication because she knows I always wanted to be a writer.”
My father did not reply so I assumed and proceeded to fins some paper and a pen and start the story of my death at the hands of my father. I guess that is how it would be interpreted.
Now, let’s clarify this for posterity. I love that expression. I loved my father and he loved me. He was a hardman. Afterall he had survived two wars.
Most people don’t realize the hardman description, especially in America.
In Northern Ireland, a hard man is a statement.
My father was a hard man.
End of Part 1
Happy New Year!!!!
