Letting his head fall into his hands he could feel his tears slipping down his cheeks and soaking the knees of his jeans.
“Dammit! Men aren’t supposed to cry”
He didn’t want to seem weak, but at this moment this was the only thing he could do. As a man of his stature it wasn’t right for him to cry, he was the head of his company, he was everything good, he was the big man at the head of table.
“Wasn’t he?”
So why was he sitting there, holding a picture of his 5 year old daughter, sobbing into his shaky hands? Why was he blubbering like a child himself, like he didn’t get what he wants. Soon he’d be wailing if no one stopped him now, but he couldn’t do anything else besides cry. It was 8am and he had the rest of the day before him.
“Desire”
His wife died in childbirth and he was given the choice of keeping his child or giving her up for adoption, but he stopped himself, looking back at all the memories he had of his wife and him and how they prepared for this child and how happy they were when she finally got pregnant. How could he give up this little gift of perfection?
She was the most beautiful child he ever laid eyes on. He could remember the moment they handed her to him and he looked at her, remembering it all, and whispered
“You’re my little Desire”
His mind was screaming “You can’t be a father, you can’t do this alone, you’re work comes first, you can’t keep the company alive when you have this child on your hands” but his eyes and heart told a different story. He could feel her little hands tugging at his fingers, but they tugged at more, he could feel the strings of his heart being knotted and tied, knowing that this was his child, his every desire lay with her. The desire to raise her right, the desire to remember his wife, for Desire had her mothers eyes, and the desire to grow with her as she grows up and learns about the world.
“I’m going to have to a patient man”
He had told himself the day he waited for 5 long hours outside the hospital room where he could hear his wife’s cries and then how it all just stopped. The room went completely silent. It was only silent for a few moments, but he heard it and it terrified him. Then he heard it all, the screams of the baby, the yells of the doctors, the nurses running in and out. That’s when he was called in, he reluctantly looked at his wife, knowing what he would find, not ready. He wasn’t ready to see his wife like this, the love of his life taken away from him.
When he looked down he saw her face, the beautiful flushed faced of an angel taken too soon.
“You’ll be the prettiest angel up there”
He wept that day, that was the first time he could remember truly crying. He cried for the lost memories. He cried for the woman who would never get to see her first daughter grow up. He cried for his daughter who would grow up with out a mother, never knowing just how amazing she was, just how special she would have been to the both of them. As he shifted his weight back and forth from foot to foot he held his Desire close and whispered.
“She would have loved you, she would have made an amazing mother, I’m sorry you’ll never get to see her, I’m sorry.”
The next few years were hard, he recalled her first birthday, and her second and third. They were all blended together of days filled with work, then coming home and being greeted by a blonde haired, blue eyed beauty. She’d pull him over to the couch, demand he sit down and climb up on his lap, she’d talk for hours, about anything that came into that busy little mind of hers, sometimes he didn’t understand her, but she had a voice that you could never get bored of. The way she spoke was as if she viewed life as a fairytale and she was the princess.
And then there were the days where he would come home and she could sense he was in a bad mood, so she’d snuggle up beside him and ask him to tell her about mommy.
“What was she like? Well baby, she was amazing, she loved to sing and dance, when we first met she won my heart by dancing to the silly songs I knew how to play on the guitar.”
“Did you love her? Very much so, more then anything in this world, more then I could ever explain.”
“Am I like her? Absolutely, just as beautiful and just as talented”
With that, she would get up and do a little dance as he hummed out a sad song of the years past. She never failed to make him smile.
Setting down the photo of his Desire he whipped the tears from his face and found the drawing she had given him only weeks before.
“Daddy, I love you. You’ve showed me what the word Love really means with everything you have given me. You make a great daddy, I wish mommy could see us now, how happy we are. I’ll always love you. Love, Desire”
He folded the drawing and tucked it into the pocket of his jacket and grabbed his keys, he needed to see her, he needed to see her one last time. Driving carefully to the site, he prepared himself and prepared himself, he needed to see what happened and how it happened. Parking, leaning back in his seat he closed his eyes and took several deep breathes before he got out of his car and made his way into the funeral home.
Stopping before a casket, only 4 feet and 4 inches tall, he ran his hands along the smooth wood as he read the newspaper article on what had happened.
“Bus crashes as kindergarten children are taken to school, but driver lost control and hit tree”
He swore under his breath and cursed God once more for taking the two people he loved most in this world from him.
With that he leaned down and kissed his daughters peaceful face once more.
“Good-Bye my sweet Desire”
|
Submission Name: A girl named Desire
