Mourning

He never cried for his father.

It's funny, what the mind chooses to dwell on in the small hours of the morning, as the minutes tick slowly on to the rising of the Sun. Like an old dog worrying at a well-gnawed bone, unwanted memories pick away at the defences, demanding their due.

Scenes played out like disjointed fragments from a silent movie, in a kind of fast-motion, jittery dance, and closing his eyes against them only threw them into sharper relief. A lilting tune, Lili Marlene, whistled on the walk to the neighbourhood playground, now just a haunting memory that could cut like a knife.

They told him that time heals all wounds, but that was a lie. Some never healed, no matter how much scar tissue was laid down. The pain never left, never faded, but it could be walled off, brick by brick, until it became like that dog's bone, old and comfortable.

The years passed, as they will, and yet he never cried for his father. Mourned him, perhaps, in a fashion, and yet he couldn't even admit to that. Was it the life that passed he mourned, or a promise unfulfilled, the dim notion that a future had been sacrificed for a past that was forever unalterable?

He never cried for his father. Or himself.