Every Day a Little Death
(I actually wrote this a while back. It's odd, morbid, and pointless, sort-of-but-not-really-fanfic but I have a strange affection for it.)
Why is there no folklore that states that a child’s life that begins with death is sure to be a cursed one?
When the father was first given the son, a tiny, blond, angel of a boy, he was told that the son’s mother was no more. The father was heartbroken, and at first wanted nothing more than to hate the son, to throw him away, to pretend he never existed. Only then would he be able to deny that his wife, his love was gone.
But the father was an upstanding man, and so all he did was give the son to a wet nurse, swearing he would never care for it. What the father did not know was that this would not be an easy task. At first, he swore that he was only visited the babe out of curiosity, but as months went by, he finally had to admit that he loved it and cherished it.
And so the father went to the other extreme that men in such a situation might: he coddled the child. He gave the son his every whim, every desire. The father swore he would make the son upright, noble, and proper, just as he was. In trade for the loss of his wife, he would shape his little blond boy perfectly.
But things rarely go as perfectly as one plans. As the son grew, the father saw that the boy was ungrateful towards all the work and effort his father had put into him. He saw that the son was not upright, noble, and proper, not in the father’s sense of words. He spent time with the wrong people, did the wrong things, thought the wrong thoughts. The son became a person the father could not understand, and so he gave up on the son – he began to ignore him.
And the son grew, eventually grew enough to leave home and begin to make his own way in the world. The father learned to be ashamed to his son, to critique and discredit his every action. He began to remember that the son was the cause of his love’s death. The father taught himself to hate the son he had once adored.
One day the father received a letter from an official of the state, sealed with black wax. It began with the words that every parent most fears, I regret to inform you that your son…
They said he died a villain, a traitor to his country, a scoundrel of no worth and no name.
The boy’s friends would have said otherwise.
The father said it was only fitting, that it mattered little. It was easy for him to say – he had already taught himself not to care. He told all his friends and relations never to refer to his son again and disgrace the family name.
But later, when the father was all alone, he crept into the study of his old, empty house, and wept for his little blond boy.