When my father lay dying, his one regret was that he had no son to perform the last rites.
My fiancé knelt at his bedside, gripping my father's hand, and swore to him:
"Dad, a son-in-law is half a son. I'll arrange the wedding and marry Ada Matthews right away."
"You just focus on cooperating with the doctors and getting well. I'll take care of you in your old age and see you off when the time comes. The best of your good fortune is still ahead of you."
But my father didn't hold on until my wedding day. He let go of this life with Clifford Rowe's name on his lips.
At the very end, having never gotten to see his son-in-law one last time, he simply refused to close his eyes.
Only when Clifford, tears in his eyes, swore he would perform the last rites did my father finally let them shut.
On the day of the funeral, Clifford was nowhere to be found.
I called him. He said:
"Lindsay has cancer. It breaks her heart that there were ten little things I once promised her and never finished. Once I've helped her get through all of them, I'll come back!"
I forced down my grief and rage and reminded him:
"Today is my father's funeral. You promised to perform his last rites. You can't send him off to die with that regret unhealed!"
Through the phone came his childhood sweetheart's violent coughing, and then Clifford said, suddenly impatient:
"How could a dead man's regret matter more than a living person's last wish? Put Dad on ice for now. Marrying you, doing the rites—everything I promised him, I'll make good on it when I'm back!"
1
Clifford's words left me cold all over.
Before I could get a word out, I heard Lindsay Dickerson ask him:
"Cliff, is it really okay that you're not going back? What if Ada gets angry? Your wedding is coming up so soon..."
Clifford cut her off, his voice gentle:
"What does she have to be angry about? The old man has no choice but to wait in the freezer for me to come back. Unless she can somehow give her dead father a real son of his own!"
"Lindy, you're not well. Don't trouble yourself over things you shouldn't. Her father's waiting on me for the rites, and now that she has no family left, she's waiting on me to marry her too. As long as she isn't a fool, she knows what she has to do!"
Clifford was so busy soothing Lindsay that he forgot to hang up.
I couldn't believe those were words the man I'd loved for eight years, the man I was about to marry, could actually say.
The whole funeral takes five hours at most, and the rite of breaking the bowl takes only a few seconds.
Yet Clifford wouldn't even give my father those few seconds.
Then how many of those grand, eternal vows he'd once made to me could he ever be counted on to keep?
With trembling hands, I ended the call.
He was right. I truly couldn't conjure a blood son for my father. But half a son wasn't hard to find.
I lifted my head and looked toward the classmate a little way off who'd been running himself ragged for me all day.
He was bowing low, thanking the friends and relatives who'd come to say goodbye to the body.
This was what Clifford should have been doing. Instead it was Brendan Delgado doing it, without a word of complaint.
Sensing my gaze, Brendan finished thanking the last of them and hurried over.
"Ada, did you get through? When is your fiancé coming?"
"The viewing is over. Next is the breaking of the bowl and lifting of the casket, then we send your father off to be cremated and buried."
I looked at the fine beads of sweat on Brendan's forehead, and at how red-rimmed his eyes were, and said softly:
"Brendan, can you break the bowl? As my father's half a son?"
The hand wiping his sweat went still.
He understood what I was really saying, and there was no joy on his face at all. Instead, anger rose in it.
"Where's Clifford? Your father only agreed to close his eyes because Clifford promised to be his dutiful son and see him off. What is he doing, vanishing now?"
I hadn't said a thing, and yet Brendan was angrier than I was.
My phone buzzed. It was Clifford.
I thought his conscience had woken and he was coming back to break the bowl for my father.
I answered, and Lindsay's frantic voice came through:
"Ada, come to the hospital, quick! Something's happened to Cliff!"
"What's wrong with him?"
"It's all my fault! Cliff was eating mango with me, and now he's having a severe allergic reaction. They're trying to save him!"
I opened Lindsay's feed. Her latest post was an intimate photo of her and Clifford eating mango cheek to cheek.
The caption:
【The first little thing he did for me: eating ten pounds of mango together!】
Clifford had liked it and commented:
【Eating your favorite mango with you, feeling your fear of death as my own—that's my promise to you!】
In that moment my heart was like a plum steeped in ice water, sour and bitter all at once.
Clifford was the type who couldn't so much as touch a mango.
Yet now, for his childhood sweetheart, he'd staked his very life to keep a promise.
So he didn't even care about his own life. How could he ever have cared about my father's regret?
