For my grandfather, who just passed away today.
It's a crime to out live your own child. When you hold them in your arms, you dream of them growing up, while you grow older after each passing day. You dream of them being something great in life, you dream of them having a family of their own. You dream of holding your first grandchild, how their little fist seemed to clutch your pinkie finger naturally, just like how your own child had long ago.
Gertie and I had been trying so hard for a child. We were young, and so full of hope then. We bought the boarding house, which was previously a run down bed and breakfast, intending it to be a house for our children. We wanted a large family, many children, so that our torn down old house would be filled with life like it once had. We wanted our love, overflowing, to fill our children's hearts.
Gertie was 36, and I 38, when we had Miles. We had finally got the child our hearts had been yearning for. Over the years, we had been trying hard for a baby, making love so many times that I've practically lost count, only to be met with disappointments just into the 3rd or 4th month. We almost lost hope, until our Miles, our golden boy, came into our lives. It renewed our hope for life once again.
We loved Miles dearly. It was not because of his achievements, his good looks (which were taken after me, of course) and his endearing, kind nature, but it was because he was ours. Even if my Miles was a monkey with 3 eyes, I would, without any doubt, love him as much as I did over the years. Yes, although our family was definitely not the one Gertie and I envisioned before, but we were still a family, nonetheless.
We did normal family things, I even went out and taught him how to play baseball when I was 46. He didn't catch it on his first try, but he continued on, persevered until the very end and eventually caught it, hours later. I remember the pains I suffered that day, even have a bruise shaped like Kentucky (the country, not that crispy chicken mind you ) on my right arm, when Miles slapped his first ball with my olden wooden bat, which just rebounded nicely from the brick wall onto my arm.
I would suffer all that pain again, just to see my son again.
Arnold is renewed hope, like his father. I remember telling him the story of his father, when we found his journal. I remember telling him the truth, because I knew that if I continued shielding him from reality, it might just crash down on him one day. I knew that I was not only protecting my grandson, I was also protecting myself. I had conjured fantasies of Miles for my dear Arnold for so many years for just two reasons alone. I wanted to create a picture of Miles in Arnold's mind. I wanted to cultivate a vision of Miles in Arnold. I didn't want to Arnold to feel that talking about his parents to us was a taboo, but I wanted him to embrace the fact that his father is a great man, and those stories, which were not really lies, but just fantasies of an old man like myself to capture the interest of a young boy at that time to show him that his father was brave, kind and courageous, which was true.
Those fantasies I conjured were also a form of self-assurance to myself. I wanted to pretend, just like a young, carefree child, that my Miles will return to back to the boarding house, that he will find his way back home, with Stella by his side, and we will be a happy family once again.
The stories got more crazy and unrealistic as the number of years of his absence increased. I wrapped the blanket of self deception around myself tighter, trying to shield myself from the reality that after all those years, he would not return. Arnold, an intelligent lad, saw through my façade soon enough.
After every story I told over the year, I remember telling my grand son, my Arnold, that you should "never eat raspberries". Honestly, it was because raspberries were Miles favourite food. And Arnold, although not the splitting image of my son, but definitely the same personality as his father. I didn't want to see Miles in Arnold. I did not want to get my hopes high up again, just so they'll come tumbling down. I did not want Arnold to be a replacement for his father, a replacement for my son. I wanted to love Arnold as my grandson, not my son.