Bittersweet: A Memoir. Angus Kennedy
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her face. From the very first day she turned up at school, she was bullied constantly, day after day. She used to hide away at the edge of the playground with her head down. One day, after a year at school, Sarah never came back in through the gates. We found out a few days later that she had committed suicide. She could have only been about ten years old. It hurts now to think about it, how cruel we are. If only I could have given her some sweets, just once . . . but I didn’t. I regret it.
I still hate myself for having been so inhumane as to ignore her, just in the same way as the other kids took no notice. I will regret that always. Maybe all it would have taken was just one single sweet from my huge hoard. I try not to make these mistakes today. It’s never too late to change, to make someone smile.
Winter came, and it was two days before Christmas Eve, December 23, 1973. It seemed odd that my mother had arranged for me to have a sleepover with my best friend so close to Christmas. I didn’t know my father was that ill, but I had noticed he had been sitting in his big, paisley armchair for unusually long periods of time, watching TV (after I bashed it) and not being very active. I always assumed it was a minor illness and he would get better. I learned later he was on morphine.
A bonus sleepover was on offer, an unexpected treat to stay over with my best friend, who lived across the road, a couple of days before the big day when we opened the presents. Yes, a double-good Christmas. What an occasion! I ran up the stairs to see my dad sitting in the living room and said a quick goodbye.
I didn’t even kiss him, just shouted my final farewell from across the room in the doorway. I didn’t really notice his hand sticking out at the side of the chair, beckoning me closer. He knew it was the last time he would ever see his son, but I was in a hurry to have fun.
If only I had kissed him, seen him again, hugged him, understood him, or touched his hand, anything, but it wasn’t to be. I might have seen the tears on his face that my mother told me about years after his death. I still think how painful that must have been for him to see me run out the door, without him having the chance to say goodbye. What atomic strength a parent must possess to see their nine-year-old child leave the room, knowing it’s the last time they will see him and the last time their son will be happy for months or years. To me, the hardest thing possible for any man to endure is knowing you are going to die and watching your kids play and laugh when you know it’s inevitable that one day yours will be among the saddest kids on the planet and you won’t be there to comfort them.
He looked pale and withdrawn. Just a winter virus, I thought.
“I love you, Angus,” he said as I headed for the door. He took a moment to compose himself. “You’ll look after your mum, won’t you, Angus?”
It seemed odd he would say something like that. He had never said it before.
“See you tomorrow, Dad,” I replied.
It went quiet. I spotted his arm from the back of the armchair reaching out for me, but I was going for a sleepover and it was fun, fun, fun. Off I ran, down the stairs with my carefully selected sleepover candies. If only I had known, I would have stayed.
I am sure my mother found it too painful to watch our last meeting. She was waiting in the hall at the bottom of the stairs looking solemn and not saying a word. Clearly she thought I wasn’t strong enough to stay home and see him die. I raced downstairs, but this time no dogs chased after me, even though they always did. Instead, they lay quietly by my father’s side, refusing to move. If only I had done the same.
Wow, what a strange day it is, I thought as I grabbed my sleeping bag in the hallway and said goodbye to my mum. She reached out her hand to try and grab me. But I just held her hand quickly, gave her a kiss, and was on my way across the road.
My friend’s mother was there on the pavement outside our house to meet me, and she was extra friendly. That was a bit odd, too, as she never came to our door to pick me up or chat.
Even more special, I thought, she’s being really nice; gonna be a great Christmas then. It was time to go and have fun.
My friend and I stayed awake into the early hours of the morning talking about what we were going to get for Christmas, especially the big present from our dads. I would always take a stash of sweets over on sleepovers and it was a special occasion to have a midnight feast and lay all the chocolates and treats over the floor while the parents were sleeping. My kids do this today.
The next morning, I sat at the breakfast table munching through my Sugar Puffs while reading the packet about the Honey Monster out loud to my friend and laughing. I could hear my friend’s mother on the phone in the hall just beside the door to the lounge we were eating in. Her voice was quiet and subdued. She hung up, came into the room, and walked over to the cooker.
That must have been some argument she had, I thought as she came over to put the scrambled eggs on the table. Then she walked over and put her hand on my shoulder. I thought it was even more strange for her to do that. My friend and I just giggled.
“Mum, you okay?” asked my friend, looking puzzled.
She said nothing and went back to the kitchen to work out her next move.
“Think I had better go,” I said to my friend.
Of course, his mother knew that the next time she saw me she would see a broken kid who wouldn’t smile for months. She was almost speechless. My dad was my rock.
I got home, and my mother was waiting in the hall. I knew instantly that something terrible had happened.
“Angus, it’s dad; he’s gone.” There was a long pause as she tried to compose herself. “He’s gone somewhere beautiful, Angus, a place where he will be really happy.” Now she was struggling to talk. “Angus, it’s your father; he’s gone,” she repeated.
She couldn’t bring herself to say the word “dead,” but she carried on talking. I got the odd words like “cancer,” “sorry,” and “died,” but now my head was spinning like a hornet’s nest. I wanted to hide, escape, or die. Surely, she was drunk again. He’ll come back of course from this “somewhere beautiful.”
And so came the end of the first chapter of my life. I wanted a nice new one, a life without chocolate and candy, even. Yes, I would never eat sweets ever again, I promised, I would say to my gods, if only it meant being able to have him back.
Christmas Day came, and there I sat in disbelief in the lounge, staring at the empty chair where my father used to sit. Now crying uncontrollably, I reached out for my present to him, not knowing whom to give it to as I held it in my shaking hands. I put it down and took a big present from under the tree to console myself and read the label.
“Happy Christmas, my beautiful son, I love you so much. Dad”
I stared at the sunken hollow in the chair where he had sat for so long, and then I opened his present to me. It was a tennis racket, the last present I ever received from my father, from a man I hardly had time to get to know. I sat on the carpet holding the racket, with my mother crying in the background watching over me. I dreamed of the days when I was the ball boy running around the tennis court in our local park, handing balls to my father when he was so fit and strong and smiling back at me. I desperately held onto all I had left, images and memories of his smiling face.
I threw my fist of earth onto the oak lid of my father’s coffin and watched the last evidence of my dad go down forever. I wanted to be with him at the bottom of the grave.
For the next few weeks and even after the funeral, I spent a lot of time by the drafty front door waiting and hoping for my dad to come home. Perhaps there had been some kind of mistake? After all, my mother was drunk all the time, especially now! And, well, she had probably lost it completely and forgotten he had just gone away for a few days and it was the wrong man in the grave. I thought of anything so I could avoid the truth, and refused to believe he was really gone. Day after day I just wished he would come back.
My crying continued and almost every night I sat in the hallway in the same spot on some boxes of back issues of the family magazine while the dogs looked on, twisting their