The Empty Desk
No pencils, no pens, not even a desk pad. Empty. Empty drawers and a cold empty chair. He used to sit there once, but now he is gone
Dad was an intelligent man. He was a qualified doctor; he was also a professor in Psychology. I used to love sitting on his lap and listening to stories, stories of when he was a young, energetic boy and what mischief he got up to. How he used to go to a pub with his friends and tell ghost stories and then have to walk home that same night.
"I was terrified", He once told me. I just giggled.
He used to sit at his desk, newspaper in hand, glasses on. I would walk in everyday after school and he would put down his newspaper and smile at me, a loving smile.
"How was school today?" He would ask.
"It was great," I would say.
He used to sit and listen to all my news of the day, laugh with me and get upset along with me. Any advice that I needed, he had.
Dad was never a rich man, we were never a rich family, but he was happy, content with life. He was happy with all he had done in his childhood, in his adulthood, the friends he made and the friends he had lost.
He lived through the war you know.
"It was bad," He would say.
"The sadness and disaster was all around us."
That was part of the reason why his family moved to South Africa, to get away from it all.
I was twelve years old when the news came, he was thirty-nine. I remember it like it was yesterday. The phone rang and mom got up to answer it. Suddenly,