This is why I Drank.
My Daddy was Murdered 21 years ago today, by his son.
And his wife, my mother.
I only found out last year, though I had been going mad in the meantime.
He killed him, albeit dying of cancer, on a hospital ward at 4 am.
He, (my brother kept telling me to go away).
He had form, either he or his wife had done the same four months earlier, to her father.
I became the pariah of the family.
Unsought, unwanted, and hated.
I did not kill my father.
I did not start to drink then, but as the accumulated guilt crept up on me grew.
“A mercy killing,” said the Irish Nun.
My father had said to me a day previous: “What price Brideshead?” after converting to the religion he loathed with a passion, Roman Catholicism.
“Why, did you allow it Daddy, or is my cry to be unnoticed in the darkness.”
Daddy, oh, my daddy.
The bottle seemed the only answer; I was dispossessed in one single stroke: death. And my only ally.
We won a major championship together. An Olympic class and then our destinies were set in stone. They hated us.
I loved my father. And they hated me for it.
© Sabrina Vallis 2024 All Rights Reserved.
