There, I stood motionless as if I had lost all control over my body. Actually, I might as well have lost control. His frail body lay on the bed. He smiled to me asking, “Don’t you have work to do?”
I answered him, “No dad, they said I could take the day off. Besides, I’d rather listen to one of your silly jokes than my boss’s complaints.”
He let out a chuckle and held my hand. His cold pale hands were soft and bony, it was getting worse. His eyes closed and he then took a deep breath and let it out slowly.
“Go to work and I’ll be sure to have a joke for you when you get back,” he suggested.
“Really?” I asked him.
“Really,” he answered.
That night never heard his last joke. I had tried to cry myself to sleep but it was fruitless. I stepped out of my room and went to the kitchen to pick up a bottle of beer. I went to the living room and rummaged my DVD case for something to watch when I stumbled upon a home-video. That disk was foreign to me, I had wondered what was inside it. I inserted it inside my player and started watching it, while occasionally sipping my beer.
‘Is this thing on?’
That was the first thing that I heard from the TV. It was my dad’s voice. As the video plays I felt my hearth throbbing inside me and my eyes welled up with tears. It was a video that my dad had recorded about me. It started from when I was 3 years old and ended when I had graduated from university. Not surprisingly, the video was full of his silly jokes. I couldn’t help but chuckle at every horrible joke he made in the video. The video ended right after he made a joke about my dorm life. This only made myself remember all the good times I had with my dad.
I put down the bottle of beer and curled up on my sofa. Why did he have to leave so soon, why can’t he stay and see his son get married, how dare he leave without wishing his son goodluck and teaching his son about how to take care of his own family. How to be a good dad just like him.
I stood up and put back the DVD in its case. As I opened the case a paper flew out and landed on my feet. I took it and opened it. There was a text written on it and I knew it was my dad’s. I read it and it said, ‘Why don’t lions eat clowns?’ I flipped it and hoping that the answer to the question existed and three it was, ‘because they taste funny.’
I chuckled and brushed a tear off my eye. I couldn’t believe he would still make me laugh from beyond the grave.
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