He Waited

By the time Mora’s Mom found out that she was pregnant, her parents had already parted ways, and by the time she was born, her father had married another woman.

“The man has the right to know that he’s going to have a child,” her grandmother said to her mother when Mora was still in the womb.

“He’s the one who broke us, Mom. He has no more rights with me,” her mother sharply replied.

“I know, honey, but he still has that right,” her grandmother pleaded.

Her mother let out a long sigh before saying, “I don’t even know if he still has the same phone number.”

“Then dial the number you have and see what happens.”

So, her mother picked up her white case cell phone and punched in the phone number from memory.

She held the phone to her right ear, and after several seconds spoke into it.

“I’m six months pregnant, and the baby is yours.”

The conversation lasted less than two minutes, and when she ended the call, she said to her grandmother.

“He’s going to send me some money for visits to the doctors, and he wants to be there when the baby is born.”

So, when Mora was born, her father was the first to hold her after the medical team. When she was a baby, Mora looked like both of her parents, and as she grew, that did not change.

On her thirteenth birthday, she went with her mother and grandmother to spend the weekend with her aunt and family. However, before she left, her father bought her a present. It was a pair of gold and diamond heart-shaped earrings.

When she was fifteen years old and was in hospital following thyroid surgery, he visited her there although she was out the following day.

Yes, her stepmother gave birth to a daughter and a son three years later; but on the other hand, her mother met Andrew when Mora was eleven years old, and three years later, they were married.

Andrew had four children who lived with their mothers, but her Mom and Andrew did not have any children.

In her nineteenth year, a co-worker became obsessed with her and would bring things or have flowers and other gifts delivered to her at work. Finally, she told him that she was not interested in dating him, but he said, “I don’t mind waiting,” and the gifts continued. Then, after about a month of saying “no, thank you” to his presents, she would “run into him” a few times outside of work. Finally, she was sure he was stalking her.

“I’ll have to report him to my boss,” she said to her Mom.

“You should tell your father,” she replied.

So, she did.

Her father listened to her and then asked her to send a photo of the co-worker to him. She already had a group staff photo on her phone, so she sent that to him. Two days later, her co-worker quit, and she no longer “ran into him.”

When she met and fell in love with Thomas seven months into their dating, her father invited them to dinner. Thomas and Mora were worried about what he would say to them. However, by the time dinner ended, they were smiling uncontrollably.

Two years later, they were engaged, and they chose a date for their wedding day. However, her step-grandfather, who lived in America, died unexpectedly. Her stepmother was in charge of his affairs, and she set the funeral on the same day as Mora and Thomas’ wedding. When she realized that the funeral and wedding were on the same date, she apologized profusely.

So, her father went to the funeral and Andrew, her stepfather, walked her down the aisle. To say that Mora’s Mom was not happy that her father would not be there is an understatement.

Nevertheless, Mora understood the difficult position he was in and accepted it.

She and Thomas were married, and a week after their honeymoon, her father, who had returned from America, invited them to dinner, and as they finished the main course, the live band began playing a familiar tune. Her Dad, dressed in a three-piece suit, wiped his fingers and mustached mouth on a white cloth napkin, pushed away from the table and stood next to her.

“May I have this dance?” he asked.

The song then came to her. It was the song she was going to dance to with her father on her wedding day. Both of them had tears in their eyes as they danced.

Time marched on, and Mora gave birth to two boys, and when their eldest son was seven years old and the younger one, four, they moved to England. They were living there for three years when her Dad started visiting them. He would visit once a year and stay with them for one month. On the other hand, her grandmother, mother and Andrew saw them every three years.

Then one day, her mother telephones her and just from the way she said her name, Mora knew that something was wrong. A driver hit her Dad while he was walking on a crosswalk.

The driver fled the scene.

Now, the doctors had given him only a few days to live. So she was on the next flight from England to his bedside. Her stepmother and siblings were there when she got to the hospital room.

Her Dad was no longer on life support. It was evident that her siblings were crying, and after greeting them and her stepmother, she sat in the chair closest to the bed and stared at her father.

His face was bruised and swollen, but as he laid there, dressed in dark-blue silk sleeping clothes that her stepmother had helped to dress him in, he looked peaceful. Tears rushed to her eyes and spilled over. Her eyes darted to the heart monitoring machine because, for a brief moment, Mora thought he was already gone. She brought her eyes back to his face and was startled to find him looking at her. He tried to speak, but nothing came out.

“Here you go, daddy,” her sister said, after pouring water into a glass with a straw for him to sip.

He took two sips, and in a hoarse voice, he whispered, “thank you.”

He looked around the room and saw his wife, two daughters, and son. His eyes then travelled back to Mora.

“Don’t cry,” he said to her, “I waited to see you.”

He closed his eyes, and the heart monitor sounded his departure.

“I love you, daddy,” she said before anguish overtook her.

The End