Diary of always

21st February, 2021

$20,000. $20,000! Fuck. I didn’t know you even had that kind of money. Whenever we daydreamed together - you in your chair, me on the floor - fantasizing about how our lives might look if we came into a chunk of it, we’d always end our conversations in the same way; my pithy one-liner, your solemn disclaimer:

“There’s gotta be at least 20k coming my way when you finally kick it, Grandpa Joe”. There was always a sideways glance in my routine here, a sly smile. “Grandpa Joe the dough”. You didn’t like that name but the twinkle in your eye wouldn’t falter. “Don’t count on it, son. There’s much I’ll pass down to you but money is not one of those things”.

And I believed you. I read the sadness in your words as truth, not sacrifice. Why did you lie?!

The amount, too - did you leave me that much as a final message? Are you speaking to me even now? It feels like two fingers. The only way I can reply to you now is through this fucking notebook. I’ve vandalised the first page already with these words that look out of place like graffiti on a newly-painted wall.

Why did you fucking die?!

I’m angry, Joe, and now my anger is enshrined forever. That’s the beauty and the agony of real writing - not typing, easily edited and erased. I can’t deny my feelings with the press of a key. Everything is binary now: the black ink on the white pages in the black notebook on the white table. There are no grays when the closest thing I had to a father, the closest thing I had to family, leaves me, and after he’s gone I find I didn’t know the man he was.

You’d laugh, if you could see me. The first thing I spent your inheritance on, aside from this stupid notebook, was a coffee from that too-clean place on the high street we always used to make fun of, la-di-da-ing with mugs made of air to our lips, little fingers pointing heavenward as we walked past. Are you up there? I haven’t been home yet since I had the news, I couldn’t face it; I’m sitting here with blotchy red eyes trying to fit in. Luckily it seems that privacy is baked into the prices and no-one’s paying me much attention.

I hope you can see me.

Don’t worry, I won’t be coming back here. You’ve taught me too well. Now I think on it, your fantasies were always more practical than mine. What was it you always used to say?

“If I had any money I’d use it to make sure I never experienced the pain of pennilessness again”. You alliterative wise-ass. “How?” I would ask, beholden to your words of gospel. Everything you said was truth to me. “I’d invest it. In whatever was most appropriate at the time: savings, education, experiences…”

But you didn’t invest it. You just let it sit, doing nothing, until it came to me. I can’t understand why you didn’t spend it how you said you wanted. I can’t understand why, if you didn’t want to spend it, you didn’t just let me have it sooner. Maybe you thought I was too young. Maybe I talked too much about the frivolous things you knew I’d waste it on, like those optimistic unproven treatments for your disease. Maybe you didn’t want me to have it until you knew I couldn’t spend it on you…

Maybe that was your investment.

Maybe that’s what gave you peace and took away the pain of living disability benefits paycheck to disability benefits paycheck: scrimping and saving to provide me with a financial future, wrapped up in a big bow of wisdom. How will I survive without your guidance? Why would I want to? Fuck, this really hurts. Who knew love could be this painful? I’m struggling to write but I understand now. Thank you. I promise to use it how you wanted. I promise to invest it. I promise to be something. Thank you. And I promise to keep you with me, Dad, here in these pages. Thank you. I miss you. Fuck.