The End Of Love by Mariam Kobras
Today is my wedding anniversary.
My husband and I have been married for 32 years now, and we’re going to celebrate by ordering in sushi and watching CSI Miami. We’re that kind of couple: comfortable with each other, best friends, we don’t need a lot of words to know what the other wants to say. We also know what the other enjoys. We go to sleep at the same time, but my hubby lets me sleep late in the morning and makes his own breakfast. In return, I iron his shirts for him. I make potato salad for him even though I really hate peeling boiled potatoes, and he brings me tomatoes and nectarines without asking.
I know, all of this sounds boring. But believe me, it’s not. It’s happiness.
Johanna asked me to write a blog post about love for today, because it’s our anniversary, and she thought it would be a good topic. I think I’ve described, in the few sentences above, what I think love looks like. It should feel as comfy as a baggy sweatshirt, taste as delicious as a glass of cold champagne, or as sweet as a cupcake.
End of story.
I’d actually rather talk about the lack of love today.
I don’t love my father.
I think every child is born with the ability to love her parents, and expects those parents to love her in return. I think there is no love more unconditional than that love, the one that connects parents and children. I think every child has the right to be loved.
And I think my father never loved me, not for one moment.
I’m this huge disappointment.
I’m not male.
I wasn’t the doll of a girl he wanted, if he could not have a boy. My dresses were always ruined when I climbed those trees, and my grades in school weren’t always A’s. When I brought back a B, his response would be, “You could have done better”, and for good measure he would slam a week’s detention on me.
I married the wrong man. A scientist, not the banker he had picked for me.
I’m not a doctor or a lawyer, but only an author.
He has told me so many times that I’m not his daughter that I have learned to ignore it, for my mother’s sake. After many years, I’ve started to visit them again, also for my mother’s sake, who can’t come visit us anymore, because he can’t be left alone. I even drag my sister with me, even though she hates it even more than I do.
In his eyes, she is even worse than I am, because she’s not married but “lives” with her boyfriend.
Not even the fact that he has two grandsons has mellowed him. I believe he hasn’t seen them no more than three or four times in their entire lives, and my older son will be thirty-one soon.
Now, he is old. My father just had his 90th birthday, and he has come to realize that his time is running out.
He has started calling me on the phone, which he never used to do, not even for my birthday or when my sons were born. Never. Ever. Now, though, now that he feels death closing in on him, he calls me.
But he doesn’t call to tell me that he loves me.
He calls me to tell me of the duties I have.
He wants me to bury him according to his wishes. Wants me to take care of my mother, and look after my sister. He tells me it’s my obligation.
He tells me to be tolerant, kind and patient.
He tells me I’m his daughter!
That was when I hung up on him.
It was more than I could take. After an entire life of not being loved, I could not muster enough love to just say, “Of course, father. Of course I’ll take care of Mama and look after my sis. Don’t worry.” I couldn’t. I wanted to, but the words stuck in my throat like big, slimy slugs. Instead, I slammed down the phone on him.
There is a point of no return for love.
There is a bridge you cross, at some point, and you can’t go back. What you feel, it’s not hate. That would be too much of a feeling. It’s just a tired, sad acceptance of a big, black hole somewhere in your center, somewhere your heart should be and isn’t, for that one person. You can watch them fade away, leave this world, and feel nothing.
The only thing that might change is that this black hole will vanish after a while, and make room for more love, for other people.
