INDImag – Contemporary fiction | Motivational short stories | Social stories | Short story criticism

I never realized I would be a ‘hero’ someday.

Then again, I didn’t know many things about me before that day…the day my baby girl was born. So much is said about how a woman’s heart and soul transforms when she has a baby, how the motherly love cannot be compared to anything else, how the bond between the mother and the child is eternal; but let me tell you that a man’s life changes for good too, the moment those baby eyes look at him like he is the hero.

The moment she curled her hand around my finger I felt safe and secure than ever before. How a smile can melt a rock of a heart, how those beady eyes can say so many things without uttering a word, how those gibberish sounds that a baby makes feels like music, can only be felt when one becomes a father.

Life was wondrous since her birth. I don’t know if she, the piece of my heart that took a form of a little girl, felt protected in my presence, but I can say for sure that I did…with her birth my life had changed forever, for good; by her side, I felt like I could accomplish anything…all I wanted to was give it all to make her life the best it can be.

But I failed at that, oh so badly.

Just three years into our lives, she had made the world a heaven for us with her own little quirks. If it was surprising us with her shrewdness one second, it was shocking us with her nothing-scares-me attitude the other. If it was looking me into the eyes and telling the most unbelievable lie in the most convincing way one minute, it was gracefully accepting her mistakes and asking for forgiveness the other. If it was playing with her Barbie one day, then it was being her tomboy self the other. Life was amazing with her around and I always have such a hard time remembering what it was like before she ever came into being.

Pa, you are my hero. I was just thinking of you and you called me. I miss you. We went to see the doctor today and he says I am sick because I miss you. He’s asked me to miss you less so I can get better, but I don’t know how to do that. Come back soon, please.

My heart ached as I heard those words. If staying away from her for a day was painful, not seeing my angel for days was torturous. But I didn’t have a choice…I was on an official tour and I won’t be home for few days.

Sweetheart, I will be back in no time. You just have to stay strong and get better before I come home so we can start working building you a play house, ok?

Promise?

Yes, I promise.

I had told her…not realizing how it was going to haunt me for a lifetime.

Things had gone bad that night back home. My baby was admitted to emergency care because she had trouble breathing. Doctors said they did all they could, but none of that was enough. Even before I rushed to the hospital to see my child, to see her smile, to hold her hands and give her strength, she had lost her life to death. She left me, she left the world…she left behind everything she loved.

My life as I knew it ceased to exist. Every second since then my heart has ached and bled in pain. Now, I am nothing better than a walking dead body. Memories of my baby fill my heart, but that isn’t enough to heal the void that she’s left behind. I cry and cry sitting alone in her room, hugging her bear, kissing her dolls. Nothing helps. My tears seem to only worsen with every passing minute…I can’t move on, I don’t want to. The only time of the day I now look forward to are nights…when I can take pills and force myself to sleep so I can see my child in my dreams…her contagious laugh, her wobbly walk, her chubby cheeks and what not.

Two years after my baby left the world, my wife suggested that we have another baby so we can move on, so we can have a family. I couldn’t digest the idea of becoming a ‘hero’ to another soul ; I couldn’t understand why we had to move on. But my wife persuaded me well…she told me it was for our good, that it would help us.

And today, I stand here staring at my new born…the one that’s supposed to bring peace to my aching heart, the one that’s the ray of hope, the one that’s is understood to be my second child, but is also my only child…and all I can do is wonder if I had done a mistake bringing another life into the world.

The minute I touched her, the minute she wrapped her tiny hand around my finger, I wanted to run away. I didn’t feel secure in the touch of my second girl. I can’t see my happiness in her eyes. I didn’t feel like a father should. I can’t get myself to accept her with all my heart. How am I supposed to go on like this? How did I not realize that the hole in my heart is here to stay and that I will only get away from anyone that comes close to trying to heal it? How am I to tell this little one someday that I love her dead sister more than I can ever imagine loving her? How is she not going to get crushed into pieces when she hears from me that she isn’t someone who can bring me as much joy as my first born could?

Time heals everything, I’ve heard. But my experience says otherwise.  Time only teaches one how to efficiently wear the mask of happiness and move on without clinging to the bygone days. Time just covers the wounds with colors of joy, but when the wind of the past rushes through, the colors are washed away and what is left, is the aching. Time only fills the depths of the grief with the dreams of future, but what if the dreams of the future are filled with the love from the past?

You are my hero too, Daddy.

…tells me my second born every so often. But I don’t want to believe her; I choose not to. Although these words resonate the same love and sincerity as if they were uttered by my first born, I’m not ready to accept it. Not yet.

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