A Note to My Son (Deceased)

You didn’t look both ways when crossing the road. You never did, it scared the hell out of your friends but you never did, you just walked out assuming the traffic would stop. It’s amazing that you got to this age, but you always put it down to blind faith in your own actions, that you always did the right thing. You got halfway across the road when you heard the dog bark, and turned to your left to see a blind man with his seeing-eye dog, and you thought: that’s why they call it a seeing eye dog. It can see everything. And you realised that all the while you assumed you knew what was happening, what was going on, what was going to happen next, what your next move was going to be, and knew that you were doing the right thing, leading the way, taking the right path, that you might have been wrong.

You realised that when you were six and three quarters, on holiday in Wales where the sun seemed to shine continually, and there was always a fair on, that you shouldn’t have hit your brother with the cricket bat on the side of his head when his back was turned, that maybe he didn’t deserve it. When the blood trickled down his face onto his neck and mingled with the red in his football shirt that maybe he hadn’t been so bad to you, that maybe when he’d kicked you the day before when you were hiding in the bush trying to catch rabbits to cook on a fire in the den, that wasn’t enough of a reason to hit him that hard, and it was hard. You remember only being six and three quarters and always losing arm wrestling competitions with your sister who was younger than you so you couldn’t have been that strong and when you lifted the cricket bat above your head it was heavy, and you struggled to do it, your mom had always said you were a sickly child, and told the story of how you were born early and had always been weak but your brother was such a big strong baby and that made you feel so inferior to him, so inferior to him in all you did that when you lifted the cricket bat above your head and swung you wanted to kill him, to hurt him so bad that he never came back, that he never hit you again, or practised wrestling moves on you with his friends or made sure you played in goal at every football game or got the window seat when you went to town on the bus.

And afterwards you felt so proud, seeing the blood on his hair and on the grass and on his hand and face where he’d rubbed his eyes to stop crying. When your mom came out because she’d heard the shouting and your dad woke up from where he’d been sleeping on the rug outside the caravan and you saw the blood on his hands where he’d been tying the tea towel to use as a bandage and you saw the blood on mom’s face where she’d been hugging your bleeding brother and she looked into his eyes and whispered to him that it was ok, and probably an accident and that his brother still loved him and you thought no, no I don’t still love him, I hate him more than anything in the world, more than rats and spiders and dogs (and it was weird that he thought of dogs because he quite liked them really, except that one that growled at him when he tried to stroke it and chased his sister away and they had to hide up the tree to be safe). You said sorry to him when your mom told you to but you didn’t mean it, you didn’t mean any of it you just remembered a time when there wasn’t this competition and fear and need for attention and that he deserved it. As you looked first at the guide dog, then at the red ford mondeo coming towards you while the driver talked on his phone you realised that you shouldn’t have hit your brother and when you sister was born you both felt a little lost, and jealous, and confused.

As the red mondeo moved closer to you reflected in the bonnet of the car you saw your face and a look of shock and surprise that you’d not seen since the day before you 18th birthday and the girl at work with the violent boyfriend invited you back to her house for a cup of tea because the pub was too loud to talk properly and you thought to yourself that as pubs go this was quite quiet, and it was only in the taxi ride back to her house when she asked you if she could put her tongue in your mouth that your realised what might be about to happen with the girl at work with the violent boyfriend that scared you when he called in sick for her every other week. But looking at her as you got out of the cab and saw the red of the streetlights reflecting on her impossibly high cheekbones that seemed even higher when she breathed in through a cigarette, so felt that this was right, and that you might be able to lose your virginity before you were eighteen like you had originally planned, and that the red of the streetlight was like a the red of the sunset in the westerns that your granddad watched on Sundays when he came to baby sit while the women of the family went to church, and you thought that this was almost romantic, so many different elements combining at last for something you had been waiting for, and that when she touched you she kept saying “is this ok?” and “do you mind?” and you kept telling her no, you didn’t mind one little bit. And when she started to cry because she thought her boyfriend was coming home and you had to leave in taxi with just a very rushed kiss to take home with you and the memory of how it felt when it seemed like everything was going to happen and then it didn’t. You always remember every year when you called her on your birthday the day after and she was with her boyfriend and giggling and he was laughing at you, you always remember every year on your birthday how that felt, about how you called her ‘the one that got away’ to yourself and imagined meeting her on a bus or at a station or anywhere that let your mind wonder a little about how things might have been if the night had ended differently.

The moment you realised that this time you wouldn’t be so lucky, that this time you might get hit and get hurt, you understood why people stopped inviting you parties, when you would get there already drunk and spend all of your time finding anyone with any faith in a god or heaven and trying unendingly to convince them that they were wrong, that there was nothing for them to believe in, that there was no hope, no great meaning. And when you saw your best friend who had been various stages of trouble all his life but had finally straightened out, stopped taking the drugs and skipping work because he’d been talking to a priest and decided that he knew what he had to do and what he needed in life and where he’d been going wrong, and you sat him down and offered him some drug or other, whatever was going round, and went out of your way to make sure he wouldn’t get to work the next day, and explained to him in detail why there was no god and priests couldn’t be trusted, and that he was wrong. And you were right. And you told him again and again and again, until he went back to the way he was before, because it suited you. And you understood why you did that, why it made you feel better to know that someone was worse off than you, that somebody needed you for advice, that there was somebody you could use as an example of why you were doing so well, a benchmark for everyone else to use. And you remembered how it felt to realise that you had crossed the line, that you had become a manipulator of people, of lives, destinies just because it suited you, how it felt before you took another pill and dulled that pain, forgot it again and again and again till you felt good again, until it didn’t matter how everyone else felt. You understood, as you realised you ere not going to be okay, because you were not going to miss the red mondeo, that your life was wrong. That everything you did was wrong. Not just misunderstood, not misguided as you had guided yourself, as you only had yourself to blame, you were wrong.

As you were scooped up onto the bonnet of the red mondeo and your head went through the windscreen you understood what this was all about. You realised you weren’t going to be injured, you were going to die. This was it. There was no way you would survive this. You understood that that your life had flashed before you, that in your last seconds all you could do was regret things. You understood that it was too late to say sorry to your brother, to your parents. The girl from work that almost slept with was always going to be the one that got away. There was no way you’d find her, tell her how much she meant to you, about how much that night had meant. You had no time to find your best friend and apologise. Tell him that every time he had thanked you for being so helpful, that it should have been you thanking him. All of the things that you wanted to do in your life were now impossible. No motorcycle trip across the US, no swimming with dolphins. But that didn’t bother you. It wasn’t the things that you didn’t do that bothered you. It was the things you did do. None of this could be undone. Now you understood. Now you understood religion, and you understood why should have faith. You tried to pray but you knew it was in vain. All those people you had convinced had not convinced you. You had told yourself not to expect anything else, not to hope for anything after, and you understood this as your body was broken by the mondeo, and you thought: this is not fair. This can’t be it. There must be more, there must be an afterlife, a heaven or hell. But you knew there wasn’t. You were going to die in the road, and then you were going to rot in the ground. By now you were hoping to go as quickly as possible. The red mondeo was behind you and you lay on the tarmac, soft in the summer sun, and you looked up at the sky and thought: Please. Let me die now. But you weren’t dead. You were dying, but not dead yet. You began to apologise to people, you could see your parents faces, you were sure you could see them. Then they disappeared. The regret disappeared. The memories went. You were snapped back to consciousness, lying on the soft wet tarmac, looking at the sunshine and the whit e clouds and the blue sky, and then the pain began. This was the worst pain you had ever felt, worse than when you fell off your bike when you were seven, worse than when the dog had bitten you when you were nine, worse than when you had broken your leg at fifteen on your friends motorbike, worse than when the girl at work had broken your heart. This pain was worse not because of the magnitude of it, not because nineteen bones in your body were broken, but because you knew you were going to die. The release from this pain would be the last release. No recovery, no painkillers, no gritty smile as your father helped you into the wheelchair. No wheelchair. No Father. The end. And it hurt like hell.