Do you remember when we made that promise, Dad? In the fading light of a summer’s evening, when you sat beside my bed and closed the book you’d been reading, leaning in to kiss me and wish me sweet dreams? Always that. Never goodnight. Definitely never goodbye.
You smelled of tea and biscuits. The beginnings of a beard peppered your chin, bristling against my cheek. Your beard was dark then. Not even a whisper of grey. Nothing like the creep of white that haunts your face now. Your skin in the glow of my bedside light was bright and flushed from a day’s work, and the comforting clatter of Mum washing up floated through the floorboards. I don’t remember how old I was, but I remember the book. The Tiger Who Came to Tea.
There was a picture of the tiger on the very last page, blowing a bugle with his back to us. The words, ‘goodbye, goodbye, goodbye…’ floated out of the end of the bugle. But you didn’t read them. Like the tiger, you never said goodbye.
‘Why can’t you say it?’ I said.
You froze. ‘What?’
‘Goodbye,’ I said. The word sliced the air.
You sat back in your chair, felled by it. ‘That’s a whole other story.’
I was suddenly wide awake.
‘You see, once someone very special said that word to me. And it changed everything.’
Goosebumps spread across my skin. ‘Who was it?’
‘My Mum. One day she pulled me in for a hug and said ‘goodbye, Tom.’ There were tears in her eyes and I just knew. I knew that that one word was as heavy as lead. I tried to hold onto her hand, but she slipped away. I never saw her again.
‘Ever since then, I have wished that I’d never let her say it. That I had run away or covered my ears or changed the subject.’
I threw my arms around you and breathed in your biscuity smell. ‘It’s ok, Daddy. I promise I’ll never say it to you.’
‘Me too,’ you said into my hair.
And we never did. No tearful airport send-offs or kisses at the door. We simply pretended to play the bugle like the tiger, smiling as we walked away.
The door opens and a nurse peers in, the one with the orange streaks in her hair.
She looks at you and then at me, her eyebrows lifting at the inner corners as she smiles. Then she nods and leaves, the unspoken message clear. It won’t be long.
Your breath starts to rattle. A shadow is settling over you, turning your gossamer skin a ghostly grey. My own breath catches in my throat.
‘Just getting a cuppa, Dad. Back in a minute.’ I fight to keep my voice light.
My footsteps echo down the corridor like the tick-tock of a grandfather clock. And as you take your final breath, I’m squeezing a polystyrene cup instead of your hand, a silent bugle-call ringing in my ears.
