When my father died, I cleared his house. My mother was long dead; my sister lives half a world away. It was me or nobody. I took a few days off work, stayed in his empty home. In the silent evenings, alone, I missed my wife and kids, freshly aware of our mortality, the inexorable progression; child, parent, grandparent, finale.

He never used a computer; he used a typewriter or wrote longhand. In old age, he bruised his feet kicking the world forward by writing letters to the local Council’s minor functionaries. A dustbin needed here, a bike path required there. He kept copies of his letters; he kept the replies; a mountain of paper.

The papers went into 25 numbered boxes. I packed up his tools and some ornaments and shipped it all back home. Everything else was trashed. I cleared out his wardrobe and chest of drawers, stuffing his clothes into black plastic garbage bags. Under socks and underpants, I found a green leather journal held shut by elastic bands, a piece of paper secured beneath them. “Destroy Without Investigation”, it read.

I spent my last evening in that house seated at the kitchen table with a bottle of red wine and a pizza, the unopened journal in front of me. Did I want to know my father’s secrets or not?

I honored the wishes of the dead and destroyed the journal, unopened, unread.

Back home, I wondered about my father and his secrets. When the long winter evenings arrived, I settled down to read through the contents of box after box. The kids had their homework; I had mine. I wanted to know more about the man behind the curtain and the secrets that were to die with him.

I read his diaries; I read correspondence. I sympathised with a man who wanted to improve the world, but also with the clerks constrained by bosses and budgets. He was pugnacious and persistent. They were polite and patient.

After weeks I reached the end. Finished! There had been no secrets to blemish the family name, but I did understand my father far better; I had found the person in the parent. I admired his struggles, an old butterfly beating its wings against ancient stone. Each of the 7.5 billion of us chooses the tiny mark we make on our planet, whether to scar or sculpt.

A few days later, we were all together in the living room; my wife reading, the children doing their homework. Seated at my desk in the corner, my back to the family, I finally reached the end of my emails. I glanced around at the kids; heads down over textbooks, they ignored me. What did they see? A back turned on them? A parent? A person? Were they even curious?

I am going to buy a leather journal of my own to leave behind. Will my children honor the instruction, or will they open it? And what will be written in it?

Gordon Pinckheard lives in County Kerry, Ireland. Retired from a working life spent writing computer programs and technical documents, he now seeks success in his sunset years submitting short stories typed out with one arthritic finger. His stories have been published by Flash Fiction Magazine, Every Day Fiction, Daily Science Fiction, Cabinet of Heed and others.