For five years, my father charged me rent while I struggled to make ends meet, and I grew to resent him. After his funeral, his best friend brought me a box that made me question everything.
Before Mom died, our house was never quiet.
Dad played guitar almost every evening, usually sitting on the living room couch while Mom sang along from the kitchen.
“Come on, buddy.”
Sometimes she’d grab a wooden spoon and use it as a microphone, making me laugh so hard I couldn’t remember the words.
“Come on, buddy,” Dad would say, patting the cushion beside him. “Your turn.”
I’d climb up with my little toy guitar and pretend I was performing in front of thousands of people.
Then Mom died when I was nine, and the music stopped.
He worked long shifts.
Dad put his guitar away. He started taking extra shifts, coming home exhausted and barely speaking to me.
He worked long shifts, kept food in the fridge, and signed my school forms. But he never seemed to care how my day had been.
“Can I get new shoes? These let water in,” I remember asking him once.
“Put on another pair of socks,” he said, without looking up from his dinner.
Dad put his guitar away.
I had a father, but he never made much effort to be a dad.
When I was twelve, I discovered some old photographs in a drawer. Dad was standing onstage with a guitar, his hair down to his shoulders, surrounded by a cheering crowd.
“Dad, you were in a band?”
“Long time ago.”
“That’s enough.”
“What was it called? Did you make an album?”
He took the photographs from my hands.