A Dying Wish

John had three children by three different women.  His two sons were binary opposites.  The older brother, Jack, was as elusive as air, while Tom’s feet were always on the ground.  Tom kept his father sane and down to earth, always taking care of him, never away for long.  He was John’s salvation; the water that fed and nurtured him, and kept him healthy.  Jack, on the other hand, was destructive to John’s very nature.  Over the years, he had become a fire that raged against his hated father.

But Claire… she was everything.  Far more than Jack, and even more than Tom.  She was tattooed forever on her father’s memory, an image of perfection.  She was the fire in his heart.  She was the air in his lungs.  She was the water that cleansed his soul.  She was the earth that rooted him to this life.  John could not die.  He had hung on for months, almost a year, always getting worse but never dying.

‘It’s Claire,’ Tom said to Jack one day.  ‘He won’t go until he sees her.’

‘Don’t be so primitive - he has to go eventually,’ said Jack.  ‘He’s not immortal.  He can’t hang on forever.’

‘I’m beginning to wonder.’

‘You don’t have to keep looking after him, Tom.  In fact, I don’t think you should.  It says something when you’re wishing for your own father’s death.’

‘Rich coming from you,’ said Tom.

‘I don’t want him dead,’ said Jack.  ‘Not particularly.  It makes no difference to me whether he lives or dies.’

‘He’s suffering.’

‘Good.’

‘I want to find her,’ said Tom.  ‘But I can’t - not unless I leave him.  And I don’t want to do that.’

‘Why not?’

‘Well, because he’d…’

‘Die?’

‘Jack,’ said Tom.  ‘He’s our father.  Please help me.’

‘He’s the only thing you and I have in common,’ said Jack.  ‘But I gave up on him a long time ago.  I don’t see why I should help his son.’

‘Aren’t you curious to meet your sister?’

‘I already met Claire when she was a baby.  But she’s not my sister.  Any daughter of his is no sister of mine.’

After that, Jack vanished into thin air for several weeks.  Through all that time, Tom stayed with his father, tending to him every day like a bed of flowers.  He was soil, water and sunlight, but John hardly even seemed to know.  Tom had been making him as comfortable as possible for a whole year by the time his speech was limited to a single word.

‘Claire…’

Claire wasn’t a person.  She was a little girl that John had lost twenty-five years ago, when her mother took her away.  But that little girl didn’t exist anymore.  She was just an idea, a dream, maybe even a whole story in John’s mind.  She was perfection incarnate.  She was soft like the earth, gentle like the air, free like water and strong like fire.

But Tom… he was nothing.  It was when he had just finished sponging down his father’s wrinkled old body that he almost decided to resent Claire… but that would have been unfair and unjust.  Claire, the real Claire, had done nothing to him.  John’s Claire had, but she wasn’t real.  Tom was not going to hate anybody who wasn’t real.

Then, on that same night, he made up his mind.  He was going to find her.  He was going to prove to John that Claire - his Claire, the perfect girl who became the perfect woman, the four elements that made his life magical - did not exist.  He would find her, and show their father the real thing.  Then he would have nothing holding him to this world.  Surely, he would have to let go.

There was one problem: Tom had no idea where to begin looking for lost people.  That was why he had approached Jack.  Jack had a way of knowing things, and he certainly would have been able to do this.  Tom was just thinking this when Jack suddenly walked into the house, back among the living after disappearing off the face of the earth a whole eight weeks before.

‘I’ve found her,’ he said.  ‘I’ve found Claire.’

‘And where is she?’ Tom asked urgently.

‘Where’s John?’

‘I’ll show you.’

Tom took Jack up to their father’s room.  The old man, as always, was lying in bed.  There was no moisture in his skin, no fire in his eyes, and the air sounded coarse and painful on his lungs.

‘I’ve found Claire,’ said Jack.  ‘She’s dead.  Do you hear me, John?  She’s been dead for twenty-five years, just after your wife took her away.  Car accident.’

John stared, his mouth gaping, his eyes welling with tears.

‘Dead,’ Jack said again, relishing the feel of the word on his tongue.  ‘All these years.’

Jack turned and walked out of the room, his shoulders square and his chin up high.  Tom followed, running after his half-brother’s long strides.

‘Jack, wait!  How did you find out?’

Jack stopped, considered Tom for a moment and then said, ‘I started with directory enquiries, but she wasn’t listed anywhere under her old name.  So I had to dig a little deeper, and I found out why.  She’s married now.  New name.  Two sons.  Nice three-bedroom semi-detached house.’

With that, he turned and walked away.  Tom stared after him for a very long time.  Then he returned to his father’s room, and approached the bed.  Cold, dry and all burned out, with the only thing keeping him there suddenly on the other side of life, John was dead.