by Abbi Gallagher
My father sits alone at the kitchen table. The sun set hours ago, but he has not bothered to turn on a light. He utters not a word, nor stirs a limb. He is made present solely by the candlelight flickering weakly across his face. Fourteen tall candles plunged into the top of a cake, left to burn as long as their wicks will last. It won’t be much longer now; the wicks are nearly gone. He probably hasn’t moved for half an hour, slowly watching the thin candles melt into nothing but piles of lumpy wax.
“Dad,” I whisper, though even the softest tone of voice bruises the stiff air. “It’s time to go to bed, yeah?”
He does not reply. The weight of his silence fills the room so much so that I cannot cross the threshold of the doorway. I linger in its space hoping my voice will carry across the void, but I fear he gave up listening long ago.
“Dad,” I try again. “It’s really quite late.”
The candles have been burning so long that the wax slips down the stick, piling up at the base. The wax cools in lumpy masses, fusing with the frosting so that some might consider the cake inedible and rush to scrape it off. My father doesn’t even stir.
His gaze remains fixed on the flickering flames, hardly even blinking even as tears slip down his cheeks. They roll slowly tracing the lines of his face like rivers to a valley without a hand to brush them away. His hands never shift from where they rest on the table before him, fingers interlaced as though clasped in prayer—so tight that the tendons across his knuckles flex white.
I check my phone; the light is blindingly harsh in the dark.
00:04
December 8th
“It’s the eighth, Dad. Time to move on.”
As if on cue, he presses his lips into a thin line, takes in a deep breath, and sighs—slowly so not to extinguish the candles. They do not burn for him.
My father has always been an orderly man. Even on this one day of the year when he seems to shut down completely, he remains methodical. Sometimes I wonder if he resents me for not sparing the same reverence. For going about my day, returning home only when it is time to pull him from his grief. Perhaps I was too young when she died, barely two years older than she was, or perhaps there is simply a difference between losing a daughter over a sister. Either way, I leave my father to his way of grieving and hope he wishes the same for me.
The candles are always purchased the day before. He always picks up the same little cake covered in fluffy, pink frosting from her favourite bakery. He does all of this so that when the sun rises on December 7th, he has everything he needs. And for this one day, he does not say a word. He spends his day reading her favourite books, spending hours staring at her photographs. There are no more photographs of her on the mantel or in the other family photo albums. He moved them all to an album just for her which he only brings out on December 7th, full of her at every stage of her life from baby pictures to her first day of kindergarten; blurry photos as she tears open Christmas presents; riding a bike for the first time all glitter and tinsel and laughter; the mess she made in the kitchen when she thought cleaning up a stray dog would mean we could keep it. For this one day, he allows himself to remember it all and then once it grows dark, he lights the candles on her cake and waits for her to blow them out.
“Just give me a few more minutes.” My father’s voice is hoarse, scratchy from a day of grief, but it is good to hear him finally speak.
“She isn’t coming. It’s time to go to bed.”
“No,” he insists. He has been lingering longer and longer these past years. It as if the time that has passed has only made it harder for him to let go while the rest of the world moves on. “No, she’s just busy. She’ll be down any moment.”
“Dad, you promised me that we will always wait until the eighth,” I try reminding him. “The seventh is a day to remember, but the eighth is time to move on,” I continue, repeating his own words back to him.
“But—” his voice cracks, fresh tears brimming at his eyes. “Blowing out the candles is her favourite part. She wouldn’t miss this for the world.” At last, my father releases his hands, reaching up to swipe away his tears as they fall.
My sister has not blown out her candles in six years.
It is as if his slight moment breaks the spell of the room and there is enough gap in his sorrow for me to worm my way in. I cross the room with careful strides, softly placing my hand on his shoulder.
“It’s time for bed, Dad. You’ll feel better in the morning.”
He shakes his head, tries to shift away from my touch. “She’s fourteen now. You know how teenagers are. She’ll come down soon.”
My sister will never be fourteen. She barely saw a day past eight.
“Dad, please. You can try again next year.” I always give him the same lines, the same comforts even if I wish I could shout at him to snap out of it, to move on for good. I dread December 7th when I lose my father to the past. But he needs this day to mourn what he lost just as much as I need him to come back to me on the eighth.
His nod is barely perceptible as he takes my hand and stands on shaky legs. With one last wayward glance, he leaves the pink cake and its fourteen candles behind.
I leave them candles burning as I guide my father to bed. Once he is asleep, I will creep back down and blow them out. In the morning, he will take the cake from the table and place it in the bin, whole. He will carry on with his life until December 7th comes around once more and hollows him out from the inside with the dull knife of painful memories. But I will be there when it clicks over to December 8th and make him whole again.