Story

alright so...

this is a story of how... my old man lost his life to the great war.

i still remember the cold, lifeless stare he would give me as he creaked back in forth in his rocking chair. his eyes filled with the victims of war. no, he didn't lose his life to the battlefield, but he lost almost everything else. his personality, his ability to speak and most importantly, his happiness.

i wasn't even sure if he recognized me half of the time. It was as if a complete stranger had taken refuge in our living room. just a cold, lifeless husk with moons under his eyes and a... pair of cheekbones screaming with malnutrition as he sat there all alone...

downing bottle after bottle of whiskey just so that he could feel something. i knew that even if he could no longer speak that- that my dad was probably still in there somewhere. the dad that used to explode with positivity and charisma no matter the circumstances. the dad that would take me to the park and push me on the swing until his arms got tired. and we'd fall over together in the grass.

even when he first got drafted he seemed so invincible. like no amount of war would ever be able to change him. even though i knew deep down he was probably scared. the day he left he made a joke along the lines of "if there is a god out there, may he have mercy... on my soul".  if he only knew how tragically ironic that was.

many years went by and my mum became deathly ill. bed-bound with a jarring flu that only seemed to get worse every day. our neighbors would sometimes stop by with home made medicines and antidotes. but as the days passed they started to show up less and less. i think that's because they started to realize it was futile. and the day i found my mother dead was the day i was catapulted out of my childhood. i buried her with a handful of tulips from our garden, but for some reason i never shed a single tear. before she had passed, she had baked an apple pie and let it cool on the kitchen windowsill,

 hoping the fragrance would help guide my father back home.

the very same day my mother had died.

every day after that, i still tried to speak to my dad. he still never spoke to me even after i told him that mom died. it seemed as if it didn't really affect him. mom's apple pie didn't lead him back. all it led was a body with no feeling. i never knew how to process these things. at one point i completely gave up. 

one morning i woke up, feeling the need to say at least one thing to my dad. i saw him in his rocking chair outside, and his chair completely stopped moving.

my father had died.

i buried him next to mom with the same tulips from our garden. this time i was crying. after all this time i was finally starting to realize the good memories i had with the both of them. 

after i buried my dad, i sat down in bed thinking about nothing. it was just me, a cold, lifeless husk with moons under his eyes.

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