The worst part of losing someone you love isn't the big hole they leave in your life. It does leave a big hole, it’s true. It's there every minute of every day, a constant aching loss, but it’s precisely because it’s there all the time that it isn't the worst part. It may seem callous to say it, but when it’s there all the time you quickly become accustomed to it. It becomes simply a new part of your life. No, the worst part of losing someone you love is all the little holes caused by something they did for you that they'll never do again, because they take you by surprise and all the original pain and shock comes back to hit you all over again, just as you thought you were finally getting over it.
One of those little holes hit me three days after the death of my mother. It was such a little thing. I'd changed my clothes and put my dirty clothes in the washing hamper, where my mother would collect them once a week and put them in the washing machine, but just as I was dropping them in it hit me that she wouldn’t be doing my washing that week because she was dead. I would have to figure out how the washing machine worked and do it myself. I had no idea how it worked! There was a dial on the front with all kind of settings on it, and buttons that controlled temperature and things called super rinse, pre wash and extra quick. I had no idea what it all meant, and so I had to hunt for the owner's manual while the shock and the grief hit me all over again, because my mother was dead and I would never see her again, never hear her voice again, never be able to tell her what my day had been like while knowing that she was listening to every word and caring. Really caring. But worse than the shock and the grief were the guilt and the shame, because the reason I was feeling that terrible grief all over again was that I was having to wash my own clothes! How petty and selfish was that? What kind of human being was I that it was having to do my own laundry that was making me miss her?
Other small holes hit me now and again over the next few days, like the time when my father and I had to do the weekly grocery shopping without her. Normally it was mum who knew what we needed to buy. She made a list. As soon as she noticed that something was running low in the house, like bread or milk or butter, she would put it on the list and buy some on the next shopping trip, but dad and I had no list. We had to go by memory, trying to remember all the things that mum normally got from the supermarket, and of course we forgot quite a few things, which meant that we were hit by quite a few tiny holes in our lives over the next few days, like when there was no vinegar to put on our fish and chips, or no washing up liquid. It was all these tiny holes that made life so hard for us in the weeks after her death, much more so than the big hole of her simply not being there.
One little hole that took us both by surprise was the arrival of a bank statement for an account she’d had long before she’d ever met my father, an account she’d never done anything with because she’d never needed to. Dad provided all the money we ever needed, and so she’d just left her bank account alone, simply filing away every bank statement as it arrived after glancing at it in mild curiosity to see how much interest she’d earned that month. The arrival of that bank statement reminded us that she must have all kinds of investments, insurance policies and who knew what else, all of which would need to be sorted out and dealt with before we could finally try to make peace with her passing and move on with our lives.
My father and I spent a whole day sorting through her belongings, therefore, finding all kinds of lost treasures that brought smiles to our faces and tears to our eyes, like an old birthday card I’d bought for her years before, one of those ones that speak when you open it. This one had a picture of the Queen on the cover, and when it was opened it spoke in an outrageous parody of the Queens voice, saying “Many congratulations. One hopes that one has a happy birthday, and that one has a very splendid year ahead of one.” You normally just throw birthday cards away after a few days, even the speaking ones. For her to have kept this one told me that she must have really loved it, or (and this was what I almost found too much to take) that she really loved me. I never show emotion in front of my father, we don’t have that kind of relationship, but hearing that voice again, hearing that reminder of the time when the three of us had been together, just living our lives, just taking each other for granted, brought the grief back full force, as if we'd only just then learned that she’d died, and I put my arms around my father as I cried into his chest.
But the job still had to be done and so we blew our noses, wiped away the tears and got on with it. There was a box under the bed my parents had shared and I pulled it out, opening it to find a thick wad of hand written letters tied up with crimson cord. “My God, she kept my old love letters!” dad cried, taking one and pulling out the folded sheet of paper. “I remember writing this, back when we were courting.” I started to open one, but he pulled them all out of my hands. “I think not,” he said, smiling. “Private, my boy.”
There was something else in the box, though. Right at the bottom. Newspaper clippings, creased and browned with age. Carefully cut from several different newspapers, but all featuring the same advert. A face. My face, I realised. Myself at the age of ten or so, happy and smiling with that dreadful fringe I'd worn back then almost hiding my eyes. Above the face were the words “Have you seen this boy?” and below it the words “Went missing 24th October. Was wearing blue jeans, leather jacket and a baseball cap with the words ‘Belfairs Park’ on it. If you have any information please contact...” followed by telephone numbers and the address of the house we'd lived in back then.
I stared at the clippings with a feeling of deep bewilderment. Dad was still looking at his old love letters, he hadn't noticed what I’d found yet. “Dad?” I said with a mouth suddenly gone dry. “What are these?”
“Mmm?” he said distractedly, putting one letter aside and picking up another.
“Dad!” I said more urgently, and with an edge in my voice that must have finally gotten through to him. He looked up, saw what I was holding and I saw something that chilled me to the bone. I saw his face suddenly turn as white as a ghost. “Oh my boy!” he said in terrible regret and sorrow. “I didn't intend for you to find out this way. I never intended for you to find out at all!”
“Find out what?” I demanded. I leafed through the clippings. Some of them were from close enough to the top of the newspaper to have the date on them, and I saw that they spanned several weeks. “Is this me? I don't remember this! When did this happen?”
He stared at me, and I saw panicky thoughts chasing themselves behind his eyes. “Yes, you deserve to know,” he said at last. “Let’s go downstairs, I’ll put the kettle on.”
A few minutes later we were sitting in the living room, cups of tea slowly growing cold in our hands. The stack of newspaper clippings sat on the small coffee table in front of me, the grainy photo of my younger self staring cheerfully up at the ceiling. “This says I went missing, for weeks,” I said. “I don’t remember anything like that happening.”
“It didn't happen to you,” said my father quietly. For some reason, the more friendly word ‘dad’ didn't seem right in my head any more.
“You mean I had a twin brother or something? I never had a brother!”
My father stared straight ahead at the wall, clearly struggling to find a way to say something he’d never thought he’d have to say. “Just say it!” I urged him. “Tell me!”
He nodded to himself, then turned to face me. “I'm so sorry,” he said, “but you are not my son.”
I stared at him. “Of course I am! What are you talking about?”
“Our son was kidnapped at the age of ten. We later learned that it was some sick pervert. He snatched him off the streets, used him for his pleasure, then dumped him in a ditch. His last hours must have been horrific, I try not to think about that. It was weeks before his body was found, and those were weeks of hell for us, a hell that grew a thousandfold when we finally learned his fate. It broke your mother. She just couldn't handle it. The hole in her life caused by his loss was so large that there wasn't enough of her left to go on. It drove her into an almost catatonic stupor. It would eventually have killed her.”
“So...?” I urged him when several seconds had passed.
“You need to know that I loved your mother totally and completely. There was nothing I wouldn’t do for her. There was only one way to save her, and that was to give her son back to her again.”
“So you kidnapped some kid the right age who looked like him?” This couldn’t be real, I told myself in mind spinning disbelief. I'm dreaming all this. “You must have had to search the whole world! And somewhere out there there’s another family grieving the loss of their son!”
“I didn’t kidnap you. There was a simpler way, a way that wouldn’t cause a fuss, not to mention a massive police manhunt like the one there was for my son. I’ve seen first hand the lengths the police will go to to find a missing child. No, I didn't kidnap you. I made you.”
“Made me?”
“I am not who you think I am. I am, in fact, a wizard...”
I jumped to my feet in sudden fury. “My mother is dead! I'm still grieving her loss, and you think this is a good time for stupid jokes...”
“I understand this is a lot to take in...”
“She was your wife! How can you treat her death as nothing more than an opportunity to...”
He shouted a word in fury and I yelped in fear as my feet left the floor and I rose towards the ceiling. “What the hell...”
“I am a wizard and I am levitating you with magic! Now do you believe?”
“Yes! Yes! Now put me down!
He gently lowered me to the floor and I staggered to the wall, holding onto it with trembling hands. “I am a wizard,” he continued. “One of the most powerful in the world. I am thousands of years old. I have been places and done things that would stagger your mind, but when I met Jenny I temporarily put that life aside to live with her as a mortal man. I still have all my magic, though, and when our son was taken I used it to replace him, to save her from insanity and death.”
“So you created me with magic?” it was becoming strangely hard to concentrate. For a moment I couldn't remember what we were arguing about. It took an effort of will to remember.
“I didn't create you. Only the One Above All can create life. I can only change it from one form to another. Maintaining you in human form requires a constant effort from me, though, and now that she’s gone there’s no further need to keep it up. I have withdrawn the magics that have kept you human all these years, therefore. You are slowly returning to your original form.”
“What is my original form?”
“Your mind will be the first thing to go, I'm afraid. You’re probably feeling it already. I was going to let it happen in your sleep, better that way I thought, but I'm glad it happened this way. You deserve an explanation, even if you'll very shortly be unable to remember, or even understand, any of it...” He continued talking, but none of it was making any sense. There were holes appearing in my mind where all the human parts were gradually evaporating away. I knew he was trying to tell me something very important and I gave him all my attention as I struggled to make sense of it, but the only thing I really knew was a sense of terrible betrayal and anger from no source I could identify...

☆☆☆

The great wizard Catavolcus laid a gentle hand on the animal's head as the physical transformation completed itself. “Funny thing,” he muttered to himself. “Jenny was so overjoyed to get her son back that she never wondered what had happened to old Bosun.” He stared into the dog's eyes, pained by the look of hurt and bewilderment he saw there, but the dog sensed his distress and laid a paw on his knee, whining as he offered compassion and sympathy. Catavolcus smiled despite himself. “Oh my dear Bosun. Dogs are such wonderful creatures. Loyal, loving, forgiving. You make such better people than we poor humans. You've grown old, haven't you? Your dog years haven't been kind to you. Well, never mind. There'll always be a warm spot in front of the fire for you, I promise...”