Fathers Hands

• Kirra Hodge, Grade 9
• Short Story
• 2021

These were the hands that held onto many things. The hands to hold a hot chocolate. The hands to have snowball fights. The hands to finger paint. The hands to make sandcastles. The hands to hold my father’s hands.
I was only eight when my father passed away. He died in a car crash on the way to my ninth birthday dinner. I remember that day like it was yesterday. It was time for cake at the dinner, but I insisted we waited until father got here when mother got the call. I watched her face turn pale and her hands tremble as the phone dropped to the ground with a thud.
Nothing has ever been the same since then. I have gotten too used to tiptoeing in the house, so mother doesn't think it’s fathers loud footsteps. Or the sound of mother cry herself to sleep every night. All the photos of our family are either smashed or locked in the garage. How I wish father was here.
I sit on the front porch swing and hear the birds singing their morning song. Mother and I got father binoculars and a bird book for his birthday one year. I remember he took them everywhere we went. A tear rolls down my eye. I always wonder why it happened to father. He didn't do anything wrong. The crash could've happened on 364 other days of the year. It could've happened to 25.36 million other people. But it happened to my father. The tears are rapidly falling off my face and onto my shirt now.
I would do anything to see my father again. Even if it were just for a day. To tell him how I’ve been doing at school, to ask him how it actually happened and most importantly to hold his hands. Ever since I was little, I used to always hold fathers hands, everywhere we went. Whether it was on a rollercoaster or walking home from school, or even when he kissed me goodnight, his hand was always holding onto mine. I remember the warmth of his hands, comforting me. I clench my fists around the arms of the swings tightly. I am in so much pain inside and out. A drop of red falls onto my pants as I realise, I have cut my hands from squeezing the swing arms too tightly. I creep inside, careful not to wake mother up and grab a few Band-Aids. I put the Band-Aids on my hands and return to the swing, suddenly feeling drowsy. I lay on the swing and drift off, remembering fathers hands forever in mine.