Chapter 8

And then a few months later, suddenly, I received a call from my lawyer. The rig foreman calls to tell me I had a mainland call. I let what a was doing and went to take the call,

"Pierce" It was my lawyer.

"Yeah, how are you, something special?

"Yes Pierce, sorry to tell you the news, your mother called a few minutes ago, I don't know err ... how to tell you this ... sorry old boy, your father passed away this early morning".

I was at first stunned, then grief made my eyes fill with tears, which began to fall down my cheeks and bearded chin, while distress and pain made my heart sank in my chest.

My father was young, hardly sixty six or seven, he was a man who took care of himself, who didn't smoke and had an orderly life. After a long silence I did ask him,

"How, I mean ... Do you know what was the cause of his death?"

"Well, if it's any consolation, he died peacefully in his sleep, probably from a heart attack"

"How ... how is my mother doing, how is she taking it, do you know?"

"Well, she was calm in the phone, but you could feel the stress and I think that she had a hint of loneliness in her voice, she also told me to tell you your father's funeral will be four days from today so you can fix things and be able to come home"

"Ok, today is Tuesday, I'll see you tomorrow, I'll call you when I get to the condo, and ... thanks my friend, many thanks"

"Ok, Pierce, take care and call me, see you tomorrow".

After the call ended, I talked with the manager to fix my transfer to land by helicopter that same day; I told him my reasons and he make sure that there was no problem, while giving his condolences. That same day I took the most important of my things and went to the mainland.

The unexpected news of my father's death was a blow in my perception of the world. It was no longer certain as the world had been so far, as from today my father was not anymore. I guess my mother had found my address and the phone numbers I had given my father, or perhaps my father in an act of love, had given them to her so she knew also how to contact me. It was a tremendous blow, I felt that my life was falling apart; he had died without seeing his dream fulfilled; his son reconciled with his mother. And me, not having been able to say to him again, how much I loved and I respected him.

Once in land, in a daze, I was somehow able to find my car in the parking lot and take off. I drove around aimlessly for a while and then headed home. For the next several hours I paced back and forth trying to make sense out of what just happened; not forgiving me for the little time I had been with my father.

The emotional pain of the unjust death became a physical pain as well. I couldn't forget all the years of what I thought were love and devotion for each other, now I knew I was wrong he has devotion and love for me, I had loved him but had not been devoted to him

The phone had been ringing constantly since I returned to the house. The first time I let the answering machine pick up and heard a voice I didn't recognize at first, a voice asking me that I return the call so we could talk. Then like a distant memory, surfaced in my mind's a voice asking me to put sunscreen on her front, it was, with minor differences the same voice of the telephone, the voice of my mother. Even today, I couldn't answer her.

She called five more times in the next hour, each message becoming less demanding until the final one, when she was crying and begging me to talk to her. I lay on my bed but did not get undressed. I lay there staring up at the ceiling and remembering my father as every emotion in my body slowly drained away, leaving me completely numb. I must have eventually fallen asleep because the next thing I knew it was daylight.

First thing in the morning I called Melanie and told her the sad news, she cried in despair and then promised me to be with me around noon, as she arranged her schedule to be free the next few days. Then I called my lawyer and asked him if I could stop by his law firm in the afternoon, he told OK, to come at three o'clock.

Melanie came home around noon and her presence was like a balm for my hurting spirit, she hugged me tightly and caressed my hair and my face, not as the lover she was to me, but as a mother do with her sick child; and after all, being the mother she was, she asked me if I had eaten something in the last twenty four hours, and as I told her no, she prepared me a hearty breakfast I ate ravenously.

She accompanied me to see my lawyer to settle some legal matters I considered necessary. After introductions and greetings, we talked about the things I wanted to settle; first point out was that when my father's testament was opened, I was not going to be there and I wanted him to represent me in the reading of the document; then I told him I wanted to sign a document in which it was to be established that I waived any rights I may have on my father's estate to my mother; they had worked and had won their assets, they were marital property and I did not think I was entitled to anything.

Secondly I said I wanted to ask them both to accompany me to the funeral home to give my father the last goodbye in private, that way if my mother was there, she would not know which of the two men was her son. Melanie moved her head slightly in disapproval but she did not say a single word; at that moment again she wasn't my lover, she was a mother, and her sympathies ran my mother's side. Then I asked them if they would accompany me to the cemetery the day of burial, with which the two agreed.

The day before the burial, we went to the funeral home, found out we were alone, I did enter alone to give my father my last respects. After, I went home to mourn my father, alone. Next day, wearing rigorous mourning black, the three of us went to the cemetery;

Melanie was striking, her blond hair contrasting with the blackness of her elegant dress.

Sam, my lawyer and I were in black, and I had trimmed my beard so we looked almost alike. At a distance we were undistinguishable.

When we arrived near the grave we stood several yards aside. Around the tomb there was a crowd, my father's colleagues and their wives, students, and a whole world of people who knew and loved him and had gone to give him their last respects, among them, alone, aloof, looking around, was my mother. She seemed lost and my heart went to her, but I couldn't go near, Melanie hissed to me to go to my mother side, I couldn't; I thought at that moment if I went to her side with what I felt for her I was cuckolding and betraying my father.

In a moment her gaze was directed towards us and greeted us with a slight inclination of her head, as when greeting someone for commitment but not knowing who the person or persons are. When the funeral was over and my father's body lowered into the grave, we left without approaching to greet my mother; next day I went alone to the grave and mourned for my father and the years we had lost.