Sunday Morning

I’ve always wondered whether rich men ever dream of losing their fortune. If they ever wake up in the morning in a cold sweat, wiping their face with a sigh of relief as the reality sets in that they’re still wealthy.

I remember the morning my daddy died. What a horrible thing, to be shot down in your own doorway. To be standing on the threshold between the safety of your home and the world outside. But nobody ever tells you to watch your chest. I suppose nobody ever considers that they ought to.

He died instantly, or if he didn’t he made no sign. He didn’t so much as say a word or look down at me after the bullet hit him. I learned later that he had died in the hospital that night, but until I was older I didn’t understand what that had meant. I had watched him die that morning as surely as I had seen the sun come up, and that was the truth of it. Whether his soul had held on inside until the coast was clear or until it was clear that help wasn’t coming, well, frankly I can’t say. But the man that was my father took his last breath as a man the moment he laid down on that doorstep.

I remember being told that they had found the men who had shot my father, and that they were being punished for what they did, but I remember not really understanding, or caring. As young as I was I didn’t know what things like justice or revenge or even anger meant. Not like I do now, anyway. I was told the men who had shot my father were to be executed, and that meant that they wouldn’t be alive anymore. And I remember feeling the most indescribable fear and confusion at the fact that these men were now going to be with my daddy in whatever place it was that he had gone to. He didn’t have many friends that I was ever aware of, and I hated to think that he’d have even less in his next life.

I never learned much about my father beyond the fact that he loved me, and that he had blood in him the colour of raspberry jam.

I don’t wake up these days much before noon on Sundays. I suppose I’m lucky that I work Saturday evenings because I’ve never been asked to get up earlier than that by my wife, although there are a lot of mornings I lie in bed and wish I could.

I still tense a little when I hear her open the front door Sunday mornings, even if it’s just to check the mail.

I still tell her it can wait until noon.