Who: an Aubrey Rois narrative. What: Five-year memorial of his father's death. Where: Woodlawn Cemetary When: A few hours after this. Warnings/Rating: Swearing and feels.
Duty, decency, reliability, honour, dignity, respect: these are all qualities that my father not only held in high esteem, but practiced every day during his time on this earth. He was a serious and disciplined man, but he could never resist the opportunity to have a laugh with friends and loved ones, given half the chance.
Aubrey paused to clear his throat and took a moment to smooth out the crumpled sheet of paper on the podium, running his fingertips over the creases and wrinkles that intersected each printed word. Each lie, written carefully in his mother’s cramped, crooked hand. He had prepared his own speech just the night before, and it had been a raw, painful thing that spoke honestly of the stilted relationship he’d had with his father. His mother had wasted no time and tossed it in the fire as soon as Aubrey had given it to her for approval. He was told in no uncertain terms that he was to read exactly what was typed out for him – no more, no less.
My father saw a lot during his lifetime. He lived in a world ravaged by war – both his father and his grandfather fought for Canada in the first and second World Wars - and he himself lived through enough conflict to drastically alter his views on the post-war world in which he himself grew up and, later, raised his own family.
Aubrey’s spirit wavered for the briefest of moments, and he felt himself grasping at invisible walls. He wondered just how he had ever convinced himself that he might be saved.
He was an only child who lived in and around Gatineau until he earned his engineering degree, and then moved me and my mother to the States in order to start his own shipping and transport company. They married young, at age twenty and twenty-three, and remained happily together for over half a century. When free of their parental responsibilities, Dad would whisk Mom away on wonderful adventures, often without her knowing where they were going.
And oh, despite the saccharine words that spilled from his tongue, Aubrey felt sickened by own his dishonesty. He had written true words that acknowledged the strained relationship that had existed between him and his father, and yet still his mother had seen fit to burn them in the brick-lined fireplace. God forbid the truth might be known.
Saddened and furious at the same time, Aubrey leaned heavily on the podium for a moment and reached into his suit jacket, pulling a stainless steel flask from his inner breast pocket. Nary a whisper broke the early-spring air in the cemetery as he spun the cap off and raised the opening to his own lips, pouring a generous amount of whiskey down his throat. The only man bold enough to catch his eyes was the priest, who stood at the head of the grave as Aubrey spared just a moment to stare in his direction, blank and empty and cold. From the corner of his eye, he could spot his mother crossing herself in the front row and trying her best to block out the whole thing. After all, she only played at strength.
Dad was a straightforward man; one who demanded little from those around him, and who expected only the best for his son. And although in his final years he was extremely involved in the growth of Rois Industries, still that bond was never broken.
With no small amount of sad, twisted amusement, Aubrey could not help but notice that the entire front row of stuffy, bespectacled businessmen with their shiny foreheads and their red, sweaty faces looked all sorts of uncomfortable. Aubrey leaned both forearms on the podium and frowned at the crowd gathered around the grave where his dad was remembered as a “loving father, husband, and son”. Shit, the whole thing was fucking hilarious if you’d ever actually met Michael Rois.
And still, one look at the thundercloud that was his mother’s face and Aubrey could not bring himself to speak the truth. He white-knuckled on the podium and his hazel eyes practically burned holes in the grass that had begun to grow over his father’s grave. He cleared his throat, and it fucking burned, like his mouth was full of acid or lye when all he should have wanted was to win his mother’s approval by rolling over and playing dead. He straightened up behind the podium and his knuckles turned white as he held tight to the edges. When he spoke for the last time, his voice was rough and lonely.
As we gather here today to remember and commemorate his life, let us bid him farewell. We shall mourn the loss of a Michael Rois: one lively, dignified soul. A soul that brought joy and fulfillment to many, and whose legacy will live on forever.
It wasn’t until nearly an hour later that Aubrey would escape the self-congratulatory circlejerk and find enough space in the nearest washroom to vomit. The contents of his stomach rushed up and splattered against the bone-white ceramic of the toilet bowl, and all that poison just made his eyes water. Still he wanted nothing more than to hold tight to his father’s gravestone, until the rest of the world simply... wasn't.