Chapter 39 - Where Poets Walk

She walked, unaware of everything which surrounded her; unaware of the sitting statue staring sideways at her; unaware of the three shadowy figures waiting for her at the other end of the misty walk down which she was treading. She was even oblivious to the fact that she was walking under an umbrella when it had stopped raining ten minutes previously. The only thing around which her thoughts were revolving was her father, her late father, and the funeral which she had just stood through, white-faced, with a distinct lack of emotion in her appearance. She was walking with her eyes looking in no particular direction, lost in her mournful thoughts. Her father, once young like her, was now no more, lost to the ether, comprised of no more than memories and stardust. She was trying to locate the words to express what she was feeling, but the problem was she didn’t feel anything. She could just sense a gaping void of any emotion which spread throughout her body, temporarily diminishing the love for her husband, her two children, and her sickly mother. She was willing herself to feel something, no matter how painful it would be, just to reassure herself of her love for her father. She thought of her children, her husband, her mother; she thought of how glum they had all looked during the ceremony, and how they had now gone off to celebrate the life of her father. She thought how her mother, who had gotten out of her bed for the first time in weeks to come to the funeral, must have felt when she saw that her daughter wasn’t even able to cry with grief.

She saw something in the corner of her eye and looked up, taking in everything around her for the first time since she had entered the park. One man out of a group of three, the other two of which were standing back, was walking towards her as if to address her.

“Miss O’Brien? I’m with the New York Times and I’m interested in writing an obituary on your father. You are Rose O’Brien?”

The woman looked up at the man’s face. He held a fake sorrowful look on his long face, completed with a long thin nose, thin lips and a generally murky complexion. “Yes, that’s me. What did you say you wanted?”

The reporter suppressed his aggravation at having to repeat his words and proceeded to address the woman once more. “Miss O’Brien, I’d like to write an obituary on your father, Mr Michael O’Brien, for the New York Times, and I was wondering if I could have some input from you on his personality " his private life as opposed to the man we all knew from his writings.”

Rose looked deep into the reporter’s shallow eyes with disdain, focusing all of her bottled up emotion into hating this man for even approaching her on such a day. ‘The man we all knew?’ Had this man known her father? No, of course he hadn’t, he just wanted an interview with the author’s daughter. It was true that there had been glimpses of her father’s private experiences in each of his novels, most of which were semi-autobiographic, but that was the sign of a truly great novelist; after all, what would he have written about had he not been taking his own experiences to new places? No, this man had not known her father; he’d probably only ever glanced at him across a crowded room during the launch of a new novel. Rose felt no reason to help this man in any way. She turned and started to walk away from the men, continuing down the path. After a few steps, she looked back at the man who was talking to his colleagues.

To her great surprise, Rose never saw this man again. Nor did any other reporters pester her about her father. She felt as if her father’s death had…

 

Michael O’Brien felt a pang of guilt flow through him. He was almost at the end of his full autobiography: from birth until predicted death. He was sure that it was the greatest work he had ever produced, up until his own death, and then he had started to find it hard to write. This wasn’t writer’s block though, he was feeling guilt for using the grief of his own family members for others’ entertainment. He didn’t want to do it but felt that it was the right thing to do for his final book, " the tale of how all of his other writings came to be, and then the conclusion to the bigger story which had weaved throughout all of his novels. He had been working up to this masterpiece for years, but now that he had finally gotten down to it, he couldn’t do it. He needed to take a break, but not for too long " his doctor had told him to finish any errands within a month and not to start any new ones " he needed to finish the book quickly or it would never hit the shelves. He started to walk downstairs to the smell of fresh coffee and suddenly felt as if someone was wrenching at his chest.

 

Rose O’Brien walked through Central Park three weeks later, oblivious to all that surrounded her: the statue, the man waiting for her at the end of the path, the rain.  She felt the emotional weight of the funeral which had taken place earlier that day on her shoulders as she approached the shadowy figure waiting for her in the mist. She came up to the man and stopped, staring at him. Her father hugged her close to his chest and spoke softly into her ear. “It was beautiful; just how your mother would have wanted.”