THE TROUBLE WITH PAPER PLANES(93)

Time passes differently here. Weeks seem like minutes, days merely moments. It all happened relatively quickly for me, although I had watched them all growing older without me. Before long, it was time to let him go again.

I was comfortable leaving him this time because it wasn’t like the other times.

This time, I knew it wouldn’t be long before I would see him again.





54 Years Later





True love is eternal, infinite, and always like itself. It is equal and pure, without violent demonstrations;

it is seen with white hairs and is always young in the heart.

- Honore de Balzac





I REMEMBER SITTING ON the floor in the living room with him on a rainy afternoon, making paper planes. I was only about seven years old, and patience was never my strong suit. But he was my Dad – the great and powerful Heath Danes. If he couldn’t figure out why they weren’t flying right, no one could.


We tried several different wing shapes and tail ideas, going through at least a dozen pieces of paper, before we found the one shape that made the plane fly better than all the others. I launched the latest design across the room, my expectations high. It flew for a few seconds, gliding smoothly, before hitting the wall and nose-diving into the TV. I was so excited, I picked it up and launched it into the air again, positive we had found the one perfect plane, the one that would eclipse all the others.

But it didn’t fly. It wobbled and fell almost immediately.

I was crushed. Dad picked up the plane and sat down on the floor with it, and I sat down beside him.

“It’s broken already,” I said, disappointed.

Dad smoothed the dented nose with his fingers, and tried to straighten it out, but I knew by now that it was spent.

“The trouble with paper planes, Henry,” he said, “Is that they’ve only got one good fly in them. As soon as they hit something, it’s all over.”

He was so right. Then, and now. Like paper planes, we only have one chance at this life, and we have to make the most of it. That was something Dad always seemed well aware of.

I still can’t quite believe he’s dead. When I walk up to the house, I half expect to find him there, pottering in the garden in shorts and bare feet, just like any other day.

But now the garden is empty. When a parent dies, I think there’s a part of you that dies with them. I wonder if it’s the fact that your DNA is linked at that fundamental level, that because of them, you are here. And now, when they leave you, it’s as if a part of your heart and soul has been taken, too. We had our moments, like all fathers and sons do, but I loved him and I know he loved me. I’m glad I got to tell him that, one last time.

He was a proud man, my Dad. He didn’t want to be a burden. In some ways, I’m glad he went quickly. The past two days have been hell, don’t get me wrong, and at times I thought he would fight it, against the odds. But he didn’t. He couldn’t. He was my hero, but not even the great Heath Danes could cheat death.

There are certain things that remind me of my childhood. Rain beating against the roof of our house. Mum’s homemade chicken noodle soup on a cold winter’s day. Playing cards by the fire when the power went out. The crunch of gravel as Dad’s truck pulled into the driveway after work.

My parents were different in many ways, but theirs was a love story, I know that for sure. They met when they were both in their early thirties, but they fell in love slowly, so Mum told me once. Both tentative, sceptical, both with the baggage of previous relationships under their belts. Over time, they became best friends, and that never changed. They were married on the beach at Wainui. By the time I came along, Mum was thirty-seven. She told me once that they had tried to have another child, but she had trouble conceiving me, and it just wasn’t to be. Now, with kids of my own, I can imagine how heart-breaking that must’ve been for them.

They never made me feel like I wasn’t enough. There was love in our house, always. Mum and Dad were like a couple of teenagers, right up until Mum’s death four years ago. Her illness was short, too. Six weeks from diagnosis to her death, but they were long weeks. Her decline was slow at first, and we all thought there was some kind of mistake. The cancer might be in remission after all. But it wasn’t. It didn’t. She became an old woman, right in front of our eyes.

Dad was a rock through all of it. He was by her side all day, every day. He knew his time with her was limited.