For the Love of a Father

I awoke to the soft breezes of La Serenissima Island, as I had done so many times in my childhood. This time was different however, for it had been a long time since I had been here. This place harbored old memories and even older resentments. It had been my home once, before the life of the city caught my attention.
As I wandered the beach outside the little town of Magdalena, I remembered how much time had passed, as buildings newly painted when I was a child had been worn down with age and the effects of weather. It was not easy as a child growing up with a strict fisherman for a father. We were so poor and out of luck that he had me doing chores and errands all over the island just so we could eat.
I remember that when I was a child there was much misfortune among the fishers and they wept as the fish evaded their nets and in the same turn their bellies. There had been harsh seasons where fishers would go out and hunt the sharks and seals for food to see if more fish would return. There were harsher seasons where the weather would rain down on our little island, and tear apart the docks, and batter the ships, there were times when I would go spear hunting for fish while my father repaired the ship.
My father would offer me to do anything we could to make money, since the seas were barren many summers of my youth. I remember that when I was not in school I was fishing or working for another resident of our island. And each night I would go home and give my father everything I had earned, save a penny or two to buy grinding stones for my carving knives. I remember he used to yell at me for spending time at home carving into the long hours of the night in our little shack.
My father was never a happy man, my mother had died in childbirth and he was depressed and angry as long as I had known him. And it seemed La Serenissima was his prison. He would sail out past the horizon, to where we could no longer see the island some days, and yet he never just left our beachside shack behind to start a new life.
I remember he would curse me with all sorts of names, and I remembered crying for him, because he was going to hell. That’s what all the other children in school told me, they always said that my father was possessed by devils, and that he would one day claim my soul.
Father Mateo told me that should my father repent he would be forgiven, but there was little hope of that. I went to church every Sunday since the day I knew how to go on my own, but my father cursed god almost as much as he cursed me. And maybe it was because I was the image of my mother, as so many stated, or maybe he just hated me for claiming her life.
I remember one time, he beat me to the point of death, and I had to drag myself to school the next day, and as I was playing one of the older boys tore my shirt off of me and there were bruises all over my body, cuts and welts from his leather belt stretched across my back. Father Mateo asked me if my father had created them, and told me that to lie was a sin, so I said yes, and they took me away from him. I saw my father now and again, always fishing on the horizon, but I didn’t speak to him for a long, long time.
I remember when I came of age I wanted to move to the big city, so I saved some money and purchased my way off of La Serenissima and into the heart of Spain. I started my life in Spain much like my father had had me do all my life, odd jobs and anything to help me make money. I lived with a family connected to Father Mateo’s church, and they funded my education, all the way to my Bachelor’s Degree in college.
I moved on with my life, forgetting La Serenissima and Father Mateo, as I transitioned in my business to New York as an international trade associate. I lived my life for many years without even needing to recall La Serenissima, until one Saturday morning I received a call from Father Mateo, now an older man, and the memories of the beach flooded my mind. I heard ocean waves everywhere I went, I could smell the warm salt air, moist with humidity, I could feel the warm sun on my skin as if I were there again, and then Father Mateo said “Yes, he’s very ill, he has at most two weeks.”
“I understand. I’ll be coming as soon as I can.” As I packed my bags and left for the airport using my cellular phone to call the office and leave my memo, I was reminded of how this is how I longed to flee whenever my father abused me.
I could not bring myself to sleep on the flight, so I tried to remember La Serenissima, from my earliest memory to the last one I had on the beach before I stepped on my boat to leave the island.
I finally arrived on La Serenissima 22 hours after leaving New York, and it was everything I remembered, and here I found myself.
As I walked to the hospital where my father was being cared for, I took in every sense granted me. The feel of warm cobblestones under my feet, the smell of oranges in the marketplace, the taste of salty air and fish on my breath, there was the sight of old houses made in the old Spanish style, and the sound of people and church bells. It was Sunday after all, and only a few people would be out of church today.
As I entered the hospital I walked to the front desk and asked where my father was being held. The nurse looked up from her bible and directed me where to go. I knew I shouldn’t be here, that I didn’t belong to this little island anymore, and that the little island home of mine wasn’t as big as it seemed years ago.
As I entered the room I saw my father awake, breathing heavily and sweating in the morning heat. He noticed me and smiled a large smile, full of regret, love and sadness, and his eyes crinkled at the edges. He called to me, and I went, standing at his bedside. As I sat beside him and talked to him, he told me about his life since I had left.
We had a marvelous conversation and in my heart of hearts, I knew what I was doing here. As I put the silencer on a soft whisper left the gun and blood soiled the bed sheets. I saw his eyes, as cold and lifeless as they were when he beat me, and as I looked to his body for solace, I whispered the one thing he had always wanted to hear, so that it could rise with his spirit and give him comfort in heaven.
This was what was needed for my transcendence and his repentance, I looked deeply into his empty eyes before leaving, and I remember saying one thing: “I love you father.”