I became immersed in silent peace with Dale’s photograph, along with its seasonal touch of the inviting Christmas tree lights. The picture shows a thaw in the weather and a respite from the hard frost; but for how long? Winter can be mild or hard, and in the Spring, we forgive the past harsh weather as the appearance of flowers lighten our mood.
This week, I have taken my inspiration from Franz Kafka.
The German novelist Franz Kafka writes about his father in “Letter to My Father.”
“What was always incomprehensible to me was your total lack of feeling for the suffering and shame you could inflict on me with your words and judgments.”
Thank you, Rochelle for this week’s prompt for Friday Fictioneers, other stories can be read HERE.
Time Thaws the Torment
I took the shortcut from the railway station along the path I used twenty years ago.
It was then I vowed never to return, but here I was.
Sat on my heavy rucksack, I looked across at the place, my childhood home once full of boyhood adventures.
I loved this country and our family’s farming life.
Come home, my mother said. It’s Christmas. He’s gone, bless his soul.
Was it him who drove me away, or my stubborn pride? A lifetime of agony and tormented pains.
Forgiveness lightened my backpack as I strode with definitive certainty.
I had returned home.
James McEwan 