certainties


Her face was broken with the emotion that her voice betrayed as she uttered a few words in the hope of trying to maintain a false sense of normality. Two weeks earlier she was in hospital having part of her lung removed and while she was on the operating table the news of her father’s death arrived. It shook the family, as a death always does, but it also left the family with a delicate and difficult decision to make – to tell her in her fragile state and risk affecting her health or to keep the terrible news a secret that burns deeply into the very core of the conscience.  The news was withheld until she made it home and had had a night of rest and sleep in her own bed. It was a deathly blow to one who had held her father in such high esteem… more so in that she was unable to be there to say good bye or to help the family in anyway. She longed to speak to her sons who always calmed her and yet one of them seemed distant and cold and silent. She wondered if he was suffering depression or if something had happened to him. The son finally appeared and spoke and this acted as a calming influence but, at the same time, it became clear that there are only two certainties in life: pain and death.

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