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8 Lessons My Father Taught Me
I don’t know about you, but fathers are supposed to be heroes for their sons. That’s how it is I guess.
And my father is my hero. Not in the way fathers are for their sons but in his own way. My father taught me many lessons. Also, not in the way that many fathers teach their sons. But in his own way. He didn’t teach me by being there, he taught me by not being there. My father didn’t teach me how to. He taught me how not to.
I remember my father... I try to remember who he was as a person but those memories are clouded by my last image of him. Him hanging there tongue sticking out, thick and drooping, almost touching the floor. Fists clenched, his neck stiff and bending to the left, a worn-out sisal rope around it tightly digging in his muddy skin.
When I first saw him hanging from that roof, I remember thinking to myself, damn! how did he do it? He was such a short man. 5’2. Had he been just two inches taller, he could not have managed to hang himself. His feet would have touched the ground.
I also remember blaming myself. We had built the goat shed in which he hang himself together. I was the one that had suggested that we raise its height to allow me to comfortably enter it in the future. Of course, I was taller than him. I had taken after my mother on that front…
