The Longest Summer XXXIV

I didn't bother trying to go back to sleep, I sat in the summer cold on the back step and looked over the city I grew up in. I don't miss it, I don't like it and even leaving my father here to be buried with his parents will never be enough to make me want to return when I no longer have to. I sound cold and bitter...but I'm not, I don't feel like I am anyway although to the outsider ear I imagine I sound quite evil.

I stood on the rocks that surrounded the house, not pebbles, an actual mountain that their house was built on. I could see his neighbourhood, I could see the one I grew up in. I called Joseph, I don't know why...maybe because he's still a stranger.

He picked up, but I could tell he was sleeping. He must think I'm insane or erratic...maybe I am. I started off with the lite stuff...dad is sick, blah blah blah. He listened, he took it all in...every last selfish word I used to describe how it made me feel. Then he told me about the time he flew home to Ireland, over twenty years ago, and cared for his dying father day in and day out for several months. That's it, he heard his father was sick so he sold his business, hopped on a plane and rushed to be the caregiver to his father. He was destroyed the day his father finally left the world...he was his hero, his best friend and the type of man Joseph strived to be. Maybe one day I will have a lovely story about my father and myself and this journey we are on together. It won't sound the same, I mean how could it? He loved his father and doted on him and would have given his last breath just to see him for that much longer...and I...well you know how I feel...