The day I lost my dad
The heaviness of that Boxing Day morning pressed down on me the way grief does when it hasn’t yet found words to describe itself. As my eyes glanced around the room all I could see was my family acting all normal. I felt sick to my stomach with what happened. It felt as if someone had got a knife and poked it in me, and left me to die. My sisters were playing with their dollies. My mum was in the kitchen cooking dinner like usual. Acting as if nothing had happened. It was just a normal boxing day as far as they were concerned. No one has mentioned the incident; It does not look like anyone will. The silence in the house was its own kind of loud, and I remember wondering how the walls could hold all that pretending without cracking.
Until we heard this bang at the door “bang, bang, bang”. We did not know what to do. Me and my sisters just looked at each other. We were all very scared. Until my mum come zooming out of the kitchen. I could tell she was worried to see who was at the door. So she slowly opened the door. It was a very croaky door. Then all of a sudden I could hear my cousins shouting “Open up Open up it is freezing outside” We all had a sense of relief.
All of a sudden we could hear this thunder and this lightning. It just started pouring with rain it was terrifying. Every five minutes we could hear a loud bang and we all jumped out of our seats. My whole family had come now. Every year they come round but after what happened last night my mum told them not to come round. They still did though. I just wanted to stop getting the thoughts out of my head about what had happened, it was terrifying. I am scared for my little sisters, they haven’t mentioned it. As for my mum, I don’t see myself ever forgiving her for what she did. It was disgusting. I can’t stop thinking about all of that blood that was there. The image of it kept coming back no matter how hard I tried to think about something else, like when you press on a bruise and your finger keeps finding it.
While I was in all these thoughts, just thinking about the incident last night, my mum just shouted at me to set the table up. She always calls me, no one else. I think she hated me now my dad has gone. I have no one to love me. I am so sad; it is like a baby who has lost their bottle or their dummy and they just curl up and cry. That is what I want to do, but I have to just forget and grow up. I am eleven years old. I need to be strong for my little sisters.
I set the table up all by myself, no one was helping me. Everyone came to the table and we had dinner. It was really strange because not one person asked about him which was really shocking. I know the stories of before my mum got married to my dad. My family never accepted him. Maybe they know what happened. Maybe they are happy about what my mum did last night. How sick is that?
All of a sudden while everyone was round the table having dinner, the phone rang but it just rang once. I went to get up to find out who it was but my mum just shouted at me to leave it. My mum has not been the same with me and I don’t think she ever will be.
Then suddenly there was a knock on the door. Then all of a sudden I had a really bad gut feeling about the person that was at the door. I was scared. My mum answered the door this time. It was the police. They came to inform everyone that my dad got murdered last night. They found his body in the river. They said someone tied him up and put selotape on his lips. They said they can’t tell us anything else until they do a post mortem. The word “murdered” bounced around inside my head, refusing to land anywhere that made sense. People don’t get murdered. Not my dad.
They said they have got officers asking questions around the neighbourhood. There was an old lady that lives round here that said it looked like someone was carrying a body out of the house early hours of the morning. They asked my mum to go down to the police station with them.
I felt sick to my stomach. My mum admitted what she did. She had no reason for killing my dad last night. She got life imprisonment. Mine and my sisters’ lives will never be the same again. I still feel sick as we witnessed everything that had happened. I lost my dad on Christmas day because my mum was selfish. I will not ever understand why she did it. Losing my dad felt like a part of me died that day too. Even now, years later, there are moments when I catch the smell of rain or hear a door bang in the night, and I am eleven years old again, sitting at that table, pretending to eat.