Eternal Faith

• Hugo Lok, Grade 6
• Short Story
• 2016

I take a long, hard stare at the blue sea. The crisp, salty air and the gentle lapping of water creates a false scene of serenity. I kick the sand with my bare feet and my toe gets cut on a sharp twig, but I do not care. I feel a hand grasping my shoulder, but I do not give a glimpse to the person behind me.
“Are you still mad about your dad?” A gentle voice says. I shrug the hand off my shoulder. I stay silent.
“Your dad is in a better place now.”
“But he shouldn’t of!” I shout. “Why couldn’t I be the one? I could of helped dad, don’t you get it mum?”
“Jen, you know your dad and I would be devastated if you weren’t here with us anymore.”
Tears fill my eyes.
“I know that! I’m devastated that dad isn’t here anymore!!”
I give another cold, hard, stare at the sea.
“Why?” I shout at the sea. “Why did you do this to me? You didn’t have to take my dad! He never did anything cruel to you!”
I wait for the sea to answer. Nothing. “Typical,” I mutter. I walk back to our house and take some flowers from the garden. Roses. Dad’s favourite. Then I walk to the graveyard. The graveyard has an odd, musty smell. There are hundreds of graves everywhere, and I can see a funeral in progress. I walk up to my dad’s grave. I look at the decrepit gravestone. It had been twelve years since I lost him. But I have thought of him every day since. I place down the flowers beside his gravestone with the engraved words: ‘Patrick Phillips: Drowned during the Boxing Day tsunami; 1955-2004’.
I can remember the day when I was just 13 years old. We were running for our lives from the tsunami. We managed to get onto the roof of a house with the help of other people there. We were just about to get dad up but we were too late and he got swept away. I never saw him again. Those three seconds had left a scar on my life forever. A few tears land on the coarse ground where he laid buried. Things have never been the same since his loss. But I know that he will come back. It may be tomorrow, in a few months, years, or centuries, or even a millennia. But I know that he will come back. And I’m sure that he will.
Because I have faith.
Eternal faith.