The loneliest moment in someone's life is when they are watching their world fall apart, and all they can do is stare.
-F. Scott Fitzgerald
chapter 14: old memories.
"Wake up Lucas, let's go walk for a while."
"What time is it, why are you waking me up so early dad?" He asked with a sleepy voice, unable to open his eyes due to how sleepy he was.
"Just get up, son, I want you to walk with me for a while."
"And the best time to start a short walk is when the sun is just rising." The father told him, then approached and pulled the blanket.
"aaaah, it's my week off dad and I came to visit you, couldn't you be a little more considerate of me, please." He said trying to reason with his father even though he knew it wouldn't work.
His father paused at the door entrance for a second, before approaching Lucas again and grabbing him by the leg and then pushing him off the bed.
"baaaam."
"Get up, play a quick game to get some sleep out of your head, and get ready to go for a walk." He said without giving room to argue.
"fiuuush."
Lucas let out a long sigh as he watched his father leave the room. "Why, he woke up so happy that he wanted to go for a walk early in the morning." Although a little in a bad mood for having been forcibly awakened, he still paid attention and began to prepare. But before that he grabbed his phone to check the time.
"05:15, barely in the morning, not even thieves get up so early, who gets up so early just to walk."
After a while Lucas was ready and left. Without hearing the beep of the alarm clock that came from inside the house. He looked at the door where his father was waiting for him, standing with a look slightly exasperated at the delay.
"What took you so long, I've been standing here for almost an hour, a little more and I'm dying of old age from waiting for you out here." He said while shaking his head.
"You're the only one who gets up so early and it only took me 15 minutes, look, it's only 05:42." He said as he showed her the time with his cell phone.
"Now, now, stop complaining and come on, I'm not getting any younger, standing here like, stupid." His father said without wanting to agree with his foolish son.
Lucas rolled his eyes, accelerating his pace until he was next to his father, approaching to try to give him a small push with his shoulder, which his father moved to the right, to avoid it.
After walking for a while and his father had not made any effort to start any kind of conversation, he could no longer resist the urge and was about to ask the question.
"and by --".
"This is bad form, no, we haven't even been walking for ten minutes and you're already sweating like you were a pig, in the slaughterhouse." He interrupted him with a question or what he thought was a mockery.
"Look at me, I'm almost 80 years old and I'm fresh, without even having a drop of sweat, how come you, just entering your 30s, can be sweating profusely." He continued with his mocking tone without giving her time to respond.
"80 years old? I thought you were about to turn your first century, with how worn out you look, I wouldn't just put you at 80 years old." He said as he gave her a sideways glance.
At that moment they both stopped and began to stare at each other for a few long seconds.
"""Hahahahahahahahaha""".
After a while they both started laughing at the same time. They continued walking while from time to time they let out a light laugh, because of the previous joke, but for the rest of the way they continued walking calmly, without continuing any kind of conversation.
At that moment they came to a bridge, and his father showed him the way, telling him to go up, it was a bridge so he could cross to the other side of the street.
'mmm, this place seems familiar to me, but I don't remember where it seems so familiar from'. He put those thoughts aside and turned around realizing that his father was having a little trouble climbing the bridge.
"you need help."
There was no mockery in his voice, he simply realized that he was seriously having a hard time climbing the stairs of the bridge. He approached to try to grab his arm and give him some support, so that it would be easier for him to climb, but before he could grab his arm, his father withdrew and did not let him touch him.
"I don't need your help, Lucas, just give me some time, wait for me upstairs and I'll be up in a minute, I won't take long."
He looked at his father for a long time, after a while he simply shrugged his shoulders and went upstairs to wait for him without thinking too much about it.
It took him a while but in the end his father managed to climb up, he approached at a slow pace while wiping the sweat from his forehead, and then stood next to Lucas and leaned on the railing and watched the sunrise together, side by side.
"It was here, right? They died here, right." This time Lucas did not wait for his father to speak first.
"Yes, your mother and Sara died here." He responded with a somewhat solemn and sad tone in his voice, but more so in his eyes, which seemed to Lucas to have aged more than before, or they were simply always like that, and he had never noticed before.
"I should never have let you write to me in that stupid way." He couldn't continue since his father stopped him from continuing what you were about to say.
"BLA BLA BLA, the only thing I've heard from you these last few years is that same stupid thing over and over again, like a damn scratch, that's no longer good for anything."
"You know I'm right, Mom and Sara didn't like me fighting and you go and write me up in a fighting competition." There was no anger or regret in Lucas's voice, just the voice of someone tired who had already said the same thing over and over again.
"And I regret that, I regretted it for a long time, so much so that I could not be a good father, neither for you, nor for any of your two brothers, Ester and Natan. Above all, I was not a father to Natan and in the end he ended up dying and that is something that I will never forgive myself."
Lucas didn't say anything, he just let her continue, while she looked away from him and looked back at the sunrise.
"Lucas, you're going to die, and I'm not saying it to scare you, I'm saying it to wake you up. I know there are days when you look in the mirror and you only see mistakes. You demand yourself, you blame yourself, you feel like you're disappointing two of the women who loved you the most.
No one is ready to lose their mother and the love of their life on the same day, or at the same time, I went through losing my mother too when I was young, and almost two decades later I lost your mother that broke me.
Let me tell you there is no course, there are no keys that will close that pain. One day you look strong and the next you break down with a smell in the kitchen, a song, something as small as a folded shirt. You are not failing: being "prepared" for that does not exist.
Grief is not overcome like passing an exam. you learn to live with what you lack. At first it burns, then it beats deeply, it appears when you least expect it and, even so, it lets you walk, I want you to understand something, son, you must live and let it hurt, do not repress it, cry, crying does not make you weak."
Lucas's eyes began to turn red, he stretched out a hand to touch his father's shoulder, but it went through him, something deep inside him did not surprise him, he already sensed it.
"Live, son."
That was the last thing he heard from his father.
Lucas slowly returned to his father's house and with trembling hands opened the door.
"Beep, Beep, Beep."
He began to hear the sound of an alarm coming from his father's room, he opened the door and there he was, his father who if he didn't know it would have thought he was asleep.
He approached with a leisurely step and turned off the alarm, with one hand as he knelt down and began to cry looking at his father lying in bed.
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The light began to enter through the window, waking up Eiden who was asleep, and who had some tears running down his face.
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1462 words written.
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