A Boy's Own Hero

Dad is long gone now - nearly twenty years. I still see his face with the deep lines etched at the corners of his mouth from the beers he’d consumed with smacking lips - beer I’d fetched home in a jug from the pub. Dad appears the way he was before the day he retched, puked, and lay back in his reclining chair the cushion crushing flat his steel-grey hair. Dad never got up from that chair again. His body shriveled like an old apple left lying on the ground in sun and rain. He died within a week. At the chapel, unknown mourners said, “He’s been spared the pain, Thank God.” But we remained, left to grapple with grief at the dimming of those bright eyes hearts heavy as we said our last goodbyes. But life does go on, pain passes. I see Dad in my mind’s eye still - giving pleasure - sipping from his pint pot of sugared tea telling tales of finding buried treasure on ghostly wrecks in the Sargasso Sea, battling giant squids for good measure. A boy’s own hero fearless, strong and proud by all life’s terrors and, in death, unbowed.