Prologue

I hate planes. Not just the thought of being in one, I hate the concept of them: The take off is heartbreak in a bottle, watching everything that you love get farther and farther away. The landing is hell because you always end up in a place you don't want to be.

I'm dreading my landing.

I was going home, although it seems happy I can guarantee you it's not. After being away for five years it seemed almost over due, which it might as well have been if my father had not passed. I got the call this morning, within the hour I hopped onto the next flight to Nova Scotia. And now I'm here, waiting for a taxi cab outside the airport in the snow.

I hugged my sides, it has only been ten minutes but that's long enough, so I walked to the funeral house instead. It was half a block away but the cold made it feel like the 10k I ran last spring. The sad building came into view after fifteen minutes of walking, its lights were a blur through the thick snow.

The French doors were open, allowing the white mess come in. Against the incoming wind, four candles were lit and slowly fading out. My father was forty when he died, how he did I don't know and I don't want to find out.

Time was passing slowly but everything was blurred around me as my mind raced with the speed of light. It all stopped when I saw the casket; the blurred light, my breath, and my very being laid there in peace. My father was my everything, my innocence and happiness in one person. And now he's gone, whisked away in the arms of Death.

The forty something people that attended looked blankly at me bursting in. The speaker silenced and the only sound remaining in the room was my shaky breath. There was only one person who didn't look at me; he stared at the closed casket and clenched his jaw, wiping a tear from his cheek. He didn't look up as he walked towards the exit until his eyes met mine, without a word he pulled me tightly into him.

I've never cried harder than tonight.