355. Four Words

We arrived at the dock as shadows grew, the wind as fierce as anything I could remember on this world or any other. The whole landscape seemed a palette of unforgiving grays from the sky dull to the dock sheen. Splattered against this achromous canvas, ships of all makes and sizes, hue faded hulls, bobbed like mobiles on the teetering edge of Hyneria’s crib as numbered flags flapped and yelped like skittish kites anxious to flee their tethered mounts. We felt as babes, and about as small, before an angry mother spewing wind and rain for reasons beyond our comprehension. Powerlessness, I suppose, carries its own phlegmatic resignation, and, oddly enough, a sense of peace, or perhaps just the peace that comes when responsibility and authority has been arrogated by a higher power.

On the platform before us, pockets of goodbyes huddled against the blustery elements, coats brown and grey and black held tight, like so many charcoal smudges, as families longed to slow the hands of time, to hope against hope that if they filibustered long enough, the clouds would cede and the sun would emerge and an announcement would blast news for everyone to return home, the crisis over. Forced smiles looked grotesque, almost as if at any moment they would crack and mothers sported raccoon eyes and crimson noses as words were selected with more care than the forgotten diamonds on their hands. Into this emotional wasteland, Ceru and I leaned into the wind, our hands firmly on our hats, our final goodbye more dreamlike than one would have thought.

We searched for a place to call our own, a place to do in public what should have been private; one had the feeling of urinating in the street, sober, and nobody cared. The whole matter was simply a distasteful nightmare, but one we would not have missed for all the world. When our feet found root, we twisted toward each other, hands finding shoulders as branches seeking support. I would rather not say what we said other than various terms of endearment and hope; promises, we left on the table, since there was no reason for either of us to play those games.

After a hug like two school girls after summer recess, I turned toward Bravo and had not taken more than three or four steps when Ceru yelled Dad. I turned, he upon me, package in hand. He said four words and thrust what appeared to be a box into my chest. Before the tears, from either of us, could flow, he turned and walked away. His gray longcoat swallowed by the interminable misty bleakness. There is a reason to turn. I wish I had. The vision of his backside disappearing, as if consumed by the sea, haunts me to this day and there are times, when the vision is so clear, that my heart threatens to burst, pound, from my chest, as if I have committed some crime. That was the last time I saw my son, the last view I had, the last image ingrained in my mind.

“What were the four words?” asked Kyra, her eyes as misty as Ceru’s must have been.

Von looked at her as if the words would come forth when they were ready, not him. After what could have only been a few seconds he said as distant as if he were back on the dock, “I love you dad.”

Four Words: A Reading



Four Words: Commentary Part 1



Four Words: Commentary Part 2