I Don't Like Father's Day

• Anita Chen, Grade 10
• Short Story
• 2022

I don’t like Father's day. It was something my family barely celebrated. Sometimes my brother would invite the family out to dinner to celebrate it but we never did much. Sometimes I would make a badly stuck together card for him because I was young. I never got to celebrate Father’s day again after I turned 12. Afterall he had passed away a few months before I turned 12.

I opened my laptop and checked my email for something interesting. There was an email in the promotions tab and I checked it. “Spoil Dad. Bring your dad and get a chance to win a 50 dollar voucher!” How insensitive, what was I meant to do? Bring them his ashes, that my family buried? Am I supposed to dig up my dad’s ashes for this! I couldn’t even bring a grand dad either, both of mine are dead. One of them died before my birth and the other died when I was 15. I swear it’s like a curse that all the husbands of the family die before their wives. I dislike Father’s day but I hate the ads more.
“Buy your dad beer to make you his favourite child.” I hated seeing these types of ads more, even if my dad was alive, he couldn’t have drank it. He had a failing liver when he was alive and the alcohol would have just sped up his passing.
“Get Dad a lawn mower.” Ha, a lawn mower can mow no lawns if the owner is dead. What am I supposed to do? Spend a few hundred dollars just to give a lawn mower to a grave? How stupid is that, I could instead be spending that money on anything else. Even if he were alive, he would have probably scolded me for wasting money on a lawn mower when we already had a perfectly good one at home.

I don’t like Father’s day, especially the ads about it. They were stereotypical and could never have been good for my dad. They would have never pleased my dad but he would have smiled and laughed at my gifts. He was nice natured like that, my family always said that he went to heaven and stuff. They say that they see him in their dreams, that he seemed to have given them warning signs before he died. I never got that, I wonder if I would have had a better relationship with him if he were alive. Would I have considered him a burden? Sometimes I wish I spent more time with him and that I was less of a brat. It couldn’t be helped anyways as I burn the paper money and watch the incense get taken by the wind.

I don’t like Father’s day but that doesn’t mean I didn’t like my father. Standing by his grave, I wonder if he is doing well wherever he is in the afterlife.