Dederik's Journal - To be Continued

[i]Vati doesn’t have much longer, even without talking about it we all know that the end is coming. If it was any other day he would have appeared to be just fine, his voice strong and grip firm. But he was getting nostalgic, we both were. It was the first time that I ever heard him open up so much, we sat for hours talking while I fought back the tears and tried to remain strong in front of him. I watched him talk about how I was born, how even when I was in diapers I was causing havoc that should be impossible for something at such a young age. It brought out the first laugh I have heard out of him in what seemed like a life time. He was always so stoic, in control of his emotions unless I went overboard on one of my usual antics or something special happened.
This was also the first time he ever told me what his was truly thinking all these years, of how he felt that day when he walked in on us; nagging about how often he told us not to make mud pies in the house. Then my clever loophole of it being a dirt cake, only to still end up being bathed and spanked before put in our room. He said when he saw the mother’s day card we had left by the dirt cake he suddenly guilty and torn on what to do.
The stories we shared were a welcome distraction from what we both knew was soon coming, neither one wishing to go to sleep and lose any more time we had together. Instead during those few days we had left we would stay up for hours on end talking, revealing what we were each thinking all those years ago that shaped who I had become. I shared how I freaked out upon finding out that one of my precious friends was really a girl, who thought she was a guy and how I didn’t know what to do.
As the end drew closer we began to talk about the future, and how proud he was of me and despite all of the trouble I had given him, he wouldn’t trade it for anything else in the world. That was when the tears started flowing, when I could no longer hold them back and found myself being held in those arms that always made me feel safe and spank me when I misbehaved. I didn’t break down when he praised me for my skills with the sword when he started teaching me at seven, it was when he said that even though I was the most annoying kid to raise in world I had still managed to make him adore me more than I could ever upset him. Not for a lack of trying either.