My Father

by Max Parent

2017 SPX Writes Writing Contest winner for nonfiction

Phone calls, everyone gets them. Some only get a few rings a day, others many. And then there's the ones who call for no reason... and won’t stop calling. Phone calls link us all together, but just as easily can tear us apart.

I can remember that final night as vividly as any memory stored within my brain. More vividly than my first skinned knee, first love, first time getting punched in the face. More than any of my firsts. I remember it so well because that night was someone's last.

I remember hearing the doctor tell my mom earlier within the year, “It’s stage four Nunzia. He’s got stage four,” and didn’t entirely know what that meant for him. In my mind I was thinking, Stage four... out of ten? It’s out of ten isn’t it?. I didn’t think much of it because of it being such a small number. Small numbers, small consequences. Right? Anywho, where was I. Yes, stage four. I honestly had no knowledge or understanding of how significant those words were. What they meant time wise. And what they meant for him: My dad. For as long as he was in the hospital, riddled with hacking coughs, and plagued by purple-black bags that were always under his eyes, I never truly saw him sad, or angry, or afraid. That man just seemed to always want to break the rules, to screw around, be the joker and keep the morale up. This guy was that patient. The one who left his oxygen tank to go get a 12 box of donuts at the cafeteria Tim Hortons. The one who would use his wheelchair to pop wheelies down the hall. The patient who used to flirt with the nurses, but in a funny way. The patient who didn’t seem to fear dying. The old bugger was never down when we went to visit him. He had Everything he could ask for at that hospital. I say that now, and only think of one thing I wish to ask. Could I have him back please?

It was later on, closer to the finish line, when my brother and I were told the meaning of “Stage four... Cancer.” Cancer. As soon as the word was expelled, so were the tears from my eyes, the positivity in my head, the ease in my heart. It seemed as if everything were falling apart. Stage four, in all it’s smallness of a number, affected me in the biggest way I have ever been.

It was three days after his birthday that he passed. He was forty four. But I like to say that he was born in 1966. It makes him seem older to think of, “Born 1966, died 2010”. Saying, “Died at forty four,” seems unfair and utterly depressing. He wasn’t even halfway to what we consider the maximum at one hundred.

We carved those dates into a stone tablet that rests within in a wall, shielding the urn with him inside of it from everything bad. I look at and see, Andre Parent 1966-2010. You know, it really does elongate time to see the dates like that. Those separation of dates are a slight comfort.

Back to the night. Don’t worry though, I will get to the day. I find that to be the most important in all honesty.

That night I was the one. I got the call. A glass of milk was on the counter, and I was trying to reach for it. And was having trouble. We had high counters, and I was short okay. Don’t judge. I was on my tiptoes trying to get this damn glass of milk, and the phone rang; the land-line telephone next to the fridge, which was also out of my reach. It kept ringing and ringing, but my parents didn’t come to answer. My mom was downstairs doing laundry, my step-dad was out, and my brother was in his room. So that damn phone kept ringing and ringing, and I couldn’t answer. But then, the ringing stopped. I decided to just leave it alone for later.

Later on that night, when my mom had finished the laundry, and was in the living room watching T.V, that phone rang again. She was quick to reach it... And quick to start crying.

“Okay. Thank You. Goodbye,” was all she said, and hung the phone up. With tears in her eyes, she came and got me, then my brother, and sat us down in the living room. She took us in her arms, her tears dripping onto our shoulders. I looked into her blue eyes and saw this, this, overwhelming struggle within her. As if what she were trying to say, she couldn’t say to us, because she knew how much harm it would cause. But then, her lips parted. And out came the words.

“He’s gone. Dad’s gone.” It was silent. All I felt was shock. Cold, heart plunging shock. My brother burst into this wailing, and was clinging to my mom on the couch for dear life. I was on her opposite side, leaning my head on her shoulder. Tears were streaming down my face, and sobbing sounds came from my lips. I was still in shock though. In my mind I kept repeating, But it was only stage four, forgetting that stage four was the worst of the worst, the ugliest, most unforgivable piece of garbage stage there was. And I continued to sob. We all got up, got into the car, and drove down to the hospital.

We arrived at the hospital in the dark, and went inside. All of us had tear streak stains on our cheeks. And as we walked through the halls, we got these looks from the staff. They could tell we had lost someone, so they gave us some distance.

We came upon his room glumly. I didn’t want to go inside, couldn’t go inside. Couldn’t see him the way he was. Our mom went in, and wasn’t in there very long. When she came out, she held in her hand, his wedding ring. And two golden cross necklaces. One for my brother. And one for me. We went home that night, and sat in the living room for hours. Mostly in silence. When we did speak though, it was stories about him. The times he had fallen off his motorcycle, how he used to completely phase and out and rock out to his classic rock in the truck. The times he would go fishing and the boat would get stuck. Or the motor would cut out. Or he would lose all the fishing gear, or he would sleep on the ice in a thin fabric tent freezing his butt off, trying to catch fish through a hole in the ice.

These may have been stories. But they were what we had left of him.

His last day - our last routine hospital visit - was disturbing, yet serene.

My brother, mother, and I, were down at the hospital paying him a visit. We got to the door of his room, and found the nurse outside, seemingly guarding the room. She looked at us somberly, yet kindly.

“He seems to be having one of his bad days today. He’s been medicated,” she told us. We noted her statement and went inside.

In the room, he lay in his hospital bed. The blinds were closed, all entertainment turned off, and the lighting dim. In the hospital bed, his face was pale, and his hair slick with sweat. He seemed out of it, disorientated. My mom started to walk to him, with us in tow, when he began to stir.

He sat up in the bed, his eyes glazed with confusion and delirium. He turned to look at us, went to the side of the bed, and tried to stand up. My mother immediately rushed over, trying to get him back to bed. But he resisted, pushing her away.

Dressed only in a stupid looking hospital gown that let his bare butt hang out, he tried to stumble to my brother and I. My mom was still trying to get him back in the bed, and at this point, the nurse and doctor were trying to usher him back to the blankets as well. But all the while, he was looking at Jacob and I. Looking with pleading eyes. I looked into his dark brown eyes, deep into them. And all I saw was longing. Longing to get to us, to embrace us... To say goodbye. He knew his time was near. And he wanted to reach his boys one last time. For we were the meaning in his life, he would say. I thought of his voice saying that in that moment, as I looked into his teary brown eyes.

He was then eased back into the bed, his head rested on a pillow. He turned his head to the doorway where we stood under,looked at us once more, and closed his eyes for the last time.

Stultus Testimonium (Society)

by Laura Clow

I long for the ‘time before time, when humans were wise’ as Anastasia Koulikovskaia speaks of in “The Nirvelli”. When humans did not shed blood over disagreements. When there was peace and tranquility. When we worked together with our variety of talents. When we combined our individual knowledge to something so colossally vast it stretched out as far as the universe itself. I long for the time when people did not believe they had to look a certain way, feel a certain way, be a certain way. I long for a time far back when there was meaning to what people did and what they felt. When we healed, nurtured, protected and accepted. When we, as mankind, stood as one with the goal to discover and to help. Not to discover in order to possess land, power and wealth. No, to discover could have simply meant new knowledge and a chance to have an adventure back then.

I long for the time before time when humans knew what it meant to be alive, what life was and the gift it is. I curse the day that the early morsel of what we call humans today, picked up a rock and bashed it into one of its own kind, over and over. The day when Earth’s creation was found to be not a tool but a weapon. Maybe that was one of the early signs that mankind is not worthy of the gifts we were given.

Fortunately, some of us were born with a beautiful gift, a secret weapon of sorts. The gift of understanding.

Some of us understand the ways in that society is horribly wrong. We understand the missing pieces in the meaning of one’s life. We understand the legitimate meaning of life. We were given this gift, born with this gift and sent out to the far corners of the Earth, with hope that we may teach others. Teach them that they are truly beautiful, that what they were given is and always will be beautiful. We will teach them wisdom, we will teach them kindness and inclusivity and the wonders of the world- ‘the secrets of the universe’. We will teach them that to wander, to imagine, to think is not something that should be shunned upon, but something to be celebrated.

But you see, there is an increasing dilemma. One can only learn if they want to listen. A teacher cannot teach if there are no students. There are students out there, but social media and society has brainwashed these listeners, these students into thinking something is wrong with them for wanting to listen. For wanting to learn. So you see, there really is no hope for us.

Mankind has been reduced to walking in the dark, completely oblivious to the beacons of light standing amongst them. What’s worse? Some people do turn their head in the direction of the light, then turn away, being wholly comfortable with basking in the shadows.

What can we do for people when they don’t want to be helped? What?

Shower Thoughts

by Emma Piccolo

Writing style: Un-informative Article

First place in the 2016 SPX Writes contest

For most people, the shower is pretty straight forward. You go in, you get clean, you make sure to scrub behind your ears, you get out, you carry on with your life. Not quite rocket science if you ask me. For others though, it’s a labyrinth of thoughts we have hidden at the back of our mind. It’s a ticking time bomb of existential crises and pondering waiting to go off in our heads. It’s not so much the shower that produces these thoughts, but more the time we spend away from distractions that causes them. There’s only so much excitement 2 in 1 conditioner can bring a person. So, while we stand scrubbing under our fingernails, our minds on autopilot due to the monotony, our minds snap us back into reality with occasionally paralysis inducing thoughts. I decided I’d compile a list of my three top aforementioned thoughts, because what else would one do on a Saturday night?

Existential crisis thoughts:

There’s nothing that I love more than having a real good shampoo lathering session, when the remembrance of me being a living breathing person who's going to die sooner or later hits me like a gosh darn fighter jet. It’s as if vanilla scented body wash coaxes out existential crises.

I’ll just be standing in the shower, (trying to be the hygienic member of society that yours truly is), when my brain decides to act as a string around my finger and remind me of my own morality. “Hey, yeah, you know how you’re breathing right now? You’re having a jolly time? Really digging the scent of generic shower gel? Well buddy ol’ pal. Don’t forget that you’re going to die some day! Alright, you have fun now.” Thanks brain, there’s no better time to send me that memo than when I’m in the midst of washing my hair.

Mind you, there’s no easy way to deal with the thought that your life is a board game and will eventually come to an end. You’re just left uneasy, paralyzed almost with the sudden realization of your own demise. But then you need to snap out of your shower crisis, because each second you waste worrying about which greeting you’ll bust out when you’re face to face with Mr.Reaper himself, is a second your water bill is rising.

I hope the board-game-metaphor equivalent of my life is Monopoly. I’ll be on this Earth forever in that case.

The “Is ketchup a smoothie, and is milk in cereal considered soup?” thoughts:

Sometimes when you’re not directly thinking of something, and your brain is on sleep mode, your train of thought takes some weird detours. It goes right past the hippocampus, cruises by the temporal lobe, and makes a left at the spinal cord. Where does this bring you? To that portion of the brain that just comes up with the most foreign concepts. The, what I like to dub it as, “Bargain bin” portion of your brain. Let me give you a taste of what I mean.

You’re going to town on cleaning your cuticles, when all of a sudden, your brain thinks “Have you ever walked by a murderer before?”. And then every other part of the body is simultaneously thinking “What the frig brain?”. There’s absolutely nothing you can do to avoid thinking these hit-or-miss thoughts. There’s no bomb shelter that will prevent you from pondering such obscurities, you just have to keep thinking about them.

Occasionally your confusing thoughts are unsettling, sometimes they’re a bit out of the ordinary, and in most occasions, they’re just flat out stupid. One time I was in the shower, and thought long and hard about a reality in which cats wore pants. Why? No reason to. As far as I know cats aren’t capable of putting on khaki pants and waltzing down the street. But showers are just so boring, that my brain felt it necessary to contemplate a universe of tennis short sporting felines.

Perhaps someone someday might sit in the shower and think up the coveted cure for cancer. Until then, we’re all going to keep sitting in the shower and debating what IS the deal with airline food and other such ridiculous thoughts.

The “Remember that embarrassing thing that happened to you 8 years ago” thoughts:

Remember that time you wet your pants in front of grade 2 hottie Bethany? Or that other time your trunks fell off in the public swimming pool and everyone noticed but poor, naive you? Or that cabinet filled with other embarrassing memories you try to repress, but your brain still holds onto them like forgotten clutter in a closet? Well, it’s time to open that filled to the brim closet of embarrassing memories, and let the floodgates of shame and humiliation run free in the space of your mind.

I’ve noticed a reoccurring pattern of whenever I step into my shower, at least one involuntary trip down memory lane occurs and I’m forced to cringe at something embarrassing I did years ago. Worst part is, surprise embarrassing memories come completely unprovoked, which makes them unavoidable, (unless you’re immune to doing embarrassing things, which, teach me your ways bud). In one moment I’m adjusting the water temperature, and then 0.5 seconds later I’m on the floor quivering at the thought of how awkward I am. No warning, no nothing. Just 100 percent concentrated embarrassment from my brain.

Some people are immune to the effects of embarrassing thoughts. They get air raided by a buried memory of their own clumsiness, but are able to shrug and laugh it off while proceeding with their shower. I on the other hand can’t help but reflect and replay every moment of the embarrassing encounter like it’s a documentary stuck on replay. Though, that’s not the half of it. While I’m attempting to recover from the side effects of one embarrassing thought, my brain is over here making all of these connectections to MORE embarrassing moments that have been long since forgotten. My brain’s just sitting there tying together a family tree of embarrassing moments, while I’m trying to get the soap out of my eyes and forget the time I was caught walking around with toilet paper on my shoe.

All in all, the shower is a pretty useful place. It allows you to get clean, it’s a private place for you to exercise your vocal chords and sing to your heart’s content, it gives you some quiet time on your own. But half the time it’s an enclosed chamber that traps you with your brain, and boy does your brain like to take advantage of it through tidal waves of contemplating your own existence, and forcing you to re-live painful scenes of disturbing awkwardness. The shower is the quiet key which unlocks the worst parts of your brain, and the only way to avoid it is not bathing. If you plan to try that solution out, let me know how it gozes.