The Boy Who Turned Into A Man

A pleasantly warm, bright day in May. Just after his ninth birthday. The boy and his six-year-old sister climbed out of his aunt's car and crossed the road with her to the park. They walked up the grassed slope to the playground, where brightly-painted swings, slides and roundabouts beckoned. The boy loved playgrounds, and should have been excited at the prospect of a couple of hours playing in the warm sunshine. Not today. Both children walked in pace with their aunt, neither wanting to run ahead as usual.



They reached the play area and while his aunt pushed his sister on one of the swings, the boy wandered off towards his favourite piece of apparatus, something for which he never knew the correct name: a solid, wood-clad barrel mounted horizontally in a frame, the idea of which being that you stood on the barrel, supported yourself on the frame with your arms, then "pedalled" the barrel round with your feet as fast as possible.


He climbed up on the barrel and started running, slowly at first, building up speed, his feet slapping down on the barrel, sending it spinning round in a blur as he looked down on it. He ran and ran, for what seemed like hours. And as he ran, all his efforts focussed on spinning that barrel, he could for just a short while feel like everything was fine. He could feel like a normal nine-year-old boy who was just out for a day with his auntie and who would, in a few short hours, be back with his family, and everything would be fine. Normal.


But even the pounding rhythm of his legs as they spun the barrel, even his ragged gasps as he ran as fast as he possibly could, nothing could completely take away the knot of anxiety in his stomach, the sickening sense of something dreadful coming towards him, and just like running on the barrel, no matter how fast he ran, he couldn't escape it. Because he couldn't stop the march of time, bringing towards him the event that would, even though he couldn't have thought about it then in such terms, change his life utterly.


As little as he was really enjoying the afternoon, when it came time to leave the park, he desperately wanted to stay. Just a little longer. Just another few minutes of being able to pretend that everything was still okay. But he acquiesced and climbed into his aunt's car. They drove in silence.



~*~


He knew, the moment he opened the door, that it had happened. Nothing about his grandparents' house was visually different, and the smell was just as he had always known it (furniture polish and pipe tobacco), yet something ineffable but fundamental had changed. They walked through into the lounge, where his grandparents sat in their usual places, and his mother sat on the sofa next to his grandma. She wasn't crying, but he could tell she'd only just stopped.


She took the boy and his sister in her arms and hugged them for a long time, before sitting them both down on the sofa and kneeling in front of them. She took one of their hands in each of her own. "Kids, I've got something to tell you. You're going to have to be very brave. You know that Daddy has been very poorly, don't you? Well, he's gone to Heaven now. He was very poorly and in a lot of pain, so the angels came and took him. He's okay now, he's not poorly any more." Her voice began to waver and fresh tears welled in her red-raw eyes. She pulled the children towards her and hugged them again tightly, burying her face in their chests. The boy could feel her shaking, and started to feel the warm wetness of her tears through his shirt.


Some time afterwards, after his aunt had left, and with his sister, mum and grandma all in another room, his granddad talked to him:


"Now, you're going to have to be very brave, you know. Your mum's going to be very upset for a while, so you're going to have to help her as much as you can, okay? You're going to have to support her. You're the man of the house now."


He was nine. Nine years old and the father he worshipped had just gone from his life forever. And yet he didn't cry. He never did. Not from that day until adulthood. Because men don't cry. And he was the man of the house now. So he couldn't cry. Had to be strong. Emotions? Feelings? Strictly to be kept inside, bottled up. Hidden. "Are you okay, son?" "Yes, I'm okay." "Are you feeling sad?" "No, I'm okay." "You can always talk to me, you know, if you want to." "Yes, I know." But it never happened. Because he was a man now.


His sister was six years old. She never really knew their father. Not like he did. Was he luckier to have had three extra years with a father? Sometimes, many years later, he thought probably not. Sometimes he wished he had been three years younger and hadn't know him at all. Overwhelming guilt accompanied these thoughts, yet still they came. Because those three extra years meant, when it happened, three extra years' worth of memories, love, and having a dad, to be achingly missed when they ended.