DARK SKIES & HOLEY PAPER

A son shares the story of an evening with his dying father, an evening where everything changed...

A piece of paper with a hole in it.

Who could of possibly dreamed, let alone imagine, the profound effect this completely trivial item would play in my life.

Yet, this generic, presumably immaterial item composed of tree pulp and cotton, sometimes rice or wheat, in fact holds the key to everything. It’s hard to explain, but I’ll try my best.

First of all, I need to make one thing very clear: a piece of paper with a hole in it is just that: a piece of paper, of varying size, with a hole right in the centre.

There is no other significance to be said than this. Believe me, I’ve spent countless hours trying to understand the hows and whys. The shape, depth or size of the paper, nor the hole or how it is cut, matters. At all.

If I’ve already lost you, believe me I get it, just bear with me. Explaining the impossible is, well, impossible. Hopefully, it’ll make sense when I’m through.

To start, I’m going to tell you a short story which I hope will explain and give you an idea. This is a story about my late father.

Many years ago when I was a child, my father, a witty, impatient, hardworking, yet Teddy bear-fluff-for-insides kind of man, once seated my younger brother, sister and I down on the living room floor. Also laid out in front of us were various sheets of white paper and a small pair of scissors, the type that were safe for kids. We must have been around nine, eight and four years of age, respectively, myself being the oldest.

While it wasn’t rare for our father to play games with us or help with home arts and crafts, it was uncommon. And that particular night was especially surprising. Our auntie had just passed away that very evening. So yeah, arts and crafts was a little out of the ordinary. I assumed at the time, it was possibly an attempt on my father’s behalf in distracting us from our grief, channelling that pain and anger into a focused creative task, in the hopes of raising our spirits.

Our father explained the task was simple: we were to each simply cut a hole in the centre of a piece of paper. That was it. You can imagine how we reacted. We wanted to cry and possibly eat ice cream. That was all. My sister didn’t even understand death at that age. Minutes of winging and moaning, mainly from my brother and I, we eventually succumbed and got to work. I don’t recall my siblings' final products, but I do mine. Especially now more than ever. I remember cutting my hole extremely small, using just the very tips of the scissors for each snip. I doubt I admitted it then, but I was quite chuffed with the result, actually.

I guess it helped cheer us up after all. At least it cheered me up.

Finished and happy with our works of art (some may even call them a masterpiece), but really just bored stiff, we each showed our pieces of paper to our father. He was more than satisfied. He told us to keep them safe for later. He then went about making his own piece of paper with a hole in it. When he was finished, he got up from the living room floor and walked over to the other side of the room, where he placed the piece of paper against the large window, holding it using his thumbs and index fingers from each hand.

It was a completely dark sky, and the stars were clear for the eyes to see. The darkness dotted with flickering stars was surreal, as if the very scene had been but a painting on a black canvass. It wasn’t just any dark sky. I know this now. Our father, still holding the piece of paper against the window, then said to us in an unusually soft voice, “You’ll see one day.”

He then stood directly in front of the paper, his back to us and simply looked.

Immediately, he began to laugh and cry at the same time. This went on for a good long while. My siblings and I shared a look of confusion. We dropped our papers, walked over to our father, and innocently tried our best to comfort him. My sister climbed onto his lap and nestled her head onto his shoulder. My brother and I took a leg each, remaining on the floor. We all sobbed together.

That’s all any of us could ever recall about that night. Neither of us has talked about all the details since, if ever. The memory simply became, “remember that time dad made us a piece of paper with a hole in it?".

We would go about life without a second more thought to it, growing older and older, through Primary School, Secondary School, College and so on, until, all of a sudden, we became adults. Working adults. Married adults. Adults with children of our own.  

The piece of paper with a hole in it story became somewhat of a legacy for our family, which we would reminisce over many times throughout the years to come, minus the latter part about our father quietly sobbing of course.

Never again did our father repeat those choices of words that night. He would laugh, smile and recount the story with us, but never again did he allude to what he told us. Neither did my siblings. It was as if the memory itself never had any sound, as if the spoken words were destined to never be repeated again.

Until last year.

Our father had passed away, after an unfortunate losing battle to cancer. It’s funny that analogy, isn’t it? Battling cancer? Was it ever even a battle in the first place? I think a better analogy of cancer would be an ambush. One either survives an ambush or they don't. No matter how you describe it, man, did our father fight. Hard. With love, pride and dignity till the very end.

Out of the countless beautiful, funny, awkward, infuriating, sad, and quiet shared moments with my father during the months leading up to his passing, one particular evening stands out vividly. That was the evening I finally understood. When everything changed.

My father was seventy-one years of age and by the time of the evening in question, had been struggling to move or even talk without pain or discomfort. The cancer had spread to his spine and other organs. At that point, two years after the diagnosis, we had tried most traditional treatments to no avail and exhausted all raised funds for various alternative treatments.

My family and I would take turns to sit with our father and keep him company. He never liked to be alone, even before he was unwell. He really was a big baby. In fact, this was a common expression used by my siblings and I. We would regularly tease him about this little known fact as well. As many times as possible.

When and if he was feeling up to it, we would talk, however. We would talk about music mostly, his favourites such as Dylan, Morrison, Springsteen, The Rolling Stones, Leonard Cohen, Billie Holiday, amongst countless others. He would always refer to these and many others as “The Greats”, and of course only his choice of music was ever acceptable.

Other times we would talk about writing, books we had recently finished or were reading, the latest movies or TV shows, maybe a quick card game or two, but usually and more often than not, he would rest with his eyes closed and I would sit, quietly gazing upon my dying father with dread, in wordless silence.

This specific evening was more or less the same. “Scandinavia” by Van Morison was playing on my father’s Alexa. His breathing had gradually changed for the worse the last few days leading up to that evening. It was slow and deep, as if he was gasping for air.

It was roughly eight in the evening and my father, suddenly, breaking the silence, opened his eyes and said, “You need to see now.”

I didn’t understand and was genuinely startled by the sudden urgency I could hear in his voice.

“See what, pop?“ I asked. “Do you need something?”

I commonly referred to my father as “pop”. Not sure when this started or why, but somewhere down the road I picked up, stole it and referred to him as such ever since. He certainly never complained. But then he never would.

He didn’t answer, instead repeated the statement, “You need to see now. I have to show you.”

I leaned forward from my seated position in response and looked around the room. There must have been something he was looking at or for, something he needed. At the foot of his bed to the right of the window was an average size bookshelf, two of the shelves we used as storage for supplements, prescription medicine, sanitary supplies and so on.

“Show me what, pop? You want something from the shelf?” I asked once more.

Again, no answer. This time he raised himself up a little and fumbled around the right side of his bed and pulled out a small notebook and tore off a sheet. He then fumbled around some more and was holding a small pair of scissors. He folded the sheet in half and then made a few cuts in the middle of the folded section of the paper.

With a big toothless grin, he held up the small sheet revealing a small hole cut in the centre.

I remember sitting there utterly puzzled, yet relieved there was no apparent medical emergency. He was smiling after all, so by all appearances, seemed fine. Well, not fine, but the usual, if you get what I mean? I presumed he must have suddenly recalled the old gag and wanted to relive the moment. So I of course, humoured him.

“Ah, the good old piece of paper with a hole in it, huh?” I said, also giving him a big smile. “We’ve not made one of those in years. You remember when you wrapped those big presents for us at Christmas, for us to only find that inside? We were gutted!“

He smiled and nodded. “I do,” he said softly. “It’s time now,” he said and took a quiet, yet deep, hoarse breath.

“Time?” I asked, then looking at my watch, as if I would find the meaning of my father’s statement there.

“Hold it to the window when I go,” he croaked.

At that very moment, I still hadn’t recalled the specific memory of my father holding the piece of paper to the window as a child. As I mentioned earlier, that part of the memory was vague as we got on. But more worryingly, it was the last word that caught my insides. He just said “go”. What did he mean by that? A sudden feeling of utter dread had taken hold of me. Why would he say that?

“Pop, I’m sorry, I don’t understand. What do you mean?" Had my father lost it? Had he succumbed to the inevitable side effects of morphine? “It’s not addictive,” they said. Maybe he was delirious? I didn’t know what to do or what to say.

Despite this and the obvious concern etched across my face, he continued to smile. It was a kind smile. A smile that only a father can share with their son. I recall the way his eyes danced at that very moment. I couldn’t put my finger on the meaning at first. But it soon hit hard and was all too obvious.

“There’s little time, my boy. Hold the paper to the window when I’m gone. To the dark sky. Only the dark sky. Then look. Really look. And you will see. You just have to look. I love you. I love you all."

And with that, my father rested his head back on the pillow, closed his eyes and drew his last breath, just as the final seconds of “Scandinavia” came to an end.

I somehow knew instantly he had left, but ignored all logic, pushing aside all the obvious signs of a body switched off, that my father’s chest was no longer rising and falling slowly like the waves at night, but now still as a mountain, that there wasn’t even a whisper of breath audible from his mouth, that this very moment would eventually come, that the inevitable stroke of Death’s touch would finally take my father. In my head, a full scale war raged, every emotion battling one another for victory. I firmly disagreed with the evident harsh reality. It just wasn’t fair. Why my father? Why now? Why couldn’t he be allowed more time?

For all I cared, Death could go stroke himself, I vividly recall telling myself. And yes, I know what that sounds like.

I rushed to his side, leaned over him and gently grasped one hand and placed my other on his face. His hand was so cold already. A single tear trail was left under each eye.

“Pop?“ I said, with quivering lips. “I’ll look. I promise. But you have to show me.“ I remember saying those words and others, but I knew there would be no response, yet it didn’t stop me from trying. “Pop?“

I was the only one in the house at that moment. My younger brother and sister were at work, my sister-in-law at the park with her two daughters, and my mother was out shopping. I would have to confront making the difficult call to each of them soon. But at that very moment, all I cared about was to comfort my father. I didn’t want to leave his side.

As a religious family, we believe the body is merely a vessel for the soul, the human spirit, whatever you want to call it, that when the body dies, the spirit finds another body, anybody it chooses, to begin a new life, a new adventure, a new game, anywhere in the cosmos. I found this deeply comforting at that moment, but it didn’t hold back the tears or the untold anguish running through my every fibre, that I would never see, hear, or feel my father again.

I sat beside him for a while, holding his cold, soft hand and stroking his hair and face. My own tears were endless, soaking the piece of paper he was clasping in his left hand. I gazed upon the small sheet he had torn off. This trivial item, no matter its obvious insignificance, clearly meant a lot to my father, enough to suddenly make the effort to do and say what he did. His last time using his fingers, using scissors and holding something in his hand. His last words. But why?

What he had just told me moments before suddenly blazed within my mind, like a calling, to place the piece of paper against the window, against the dark sky, and to look.

I wiped the tears from my face and gently took hold of the piece of paper. I looked it over, front and back, upside down, trying to find any clues, text, pictures, notes, symbols, anything. But there was nothing at all. It was what it was. I gazed upon my father’s kind face once again and forced a smile and gently squeezed his hand.

“Okay, then. I’ll look. For you, pop.“

One thing was for sure, I was going to honour his last wish, no matter how bizarre and silly it seemed.

I walked over to the window, looked down at the sheet in my hands, then back at my father. I let out a deep breath, partly in response to what the hell I was doing but also in deciding to take the task at hand seriously. You never know who might be watching.

With my tear-soaked index fingers and thumbs, trembling slightly and feeling almost ashamed for leaving my father’s side, I placed the piece of paper with a hole in it against the window. It was certainly a clear, dark sky.

Doing so revealed a black hole. Not perfectly round, but a black hole nonetheless. It caught my attention like nothing before.

I looked deeper into the back hole.

I really looked. Just as he said to.

I don’t know why or how, but it seemed to draw me in. All my attention, focus, thoughts, fears, desires. All of it. I couldn’t look away even if I tried. It was both electrifying and beautiful, terrifying and adventurous. All at the same time.

This black hole was everything and nothing. It was, and it wasn’t. It was past, present and future, timeless maybe. It was the blackest of black I had ever seen, probably that anyone had ever seen. Anywhere.

I felt the hairs on my back and arms stand up. Tingles shivered through my body like I’d never experienced before.

Then I felt a cold force from the other side of the glass, seeping ever so gently through the black hole, into my fingertips, down my hands and arms and into every cell of my makeup.

Everything, and I simply mean everything, suddenly made sense. Like placing the final piece of a complex puzzle. Click. Just like that.

I smiled, laughed, and then I cried.

Not from loss, anger or pain, but from the same feeling akin to saying goodbye to a loved one you may never see again for many years. Maybe never.

But all that matters is you know where they are.

That they are.

And that single fact alone brings you comfort.

 

The End

 

Author's Note

Word count: 2899