Have you ever stood on the beach and have a wave crash into you? Known how you fall without control, your face hits the sand, and the drawback of the water pulls you in again?

That was how Joseph felt when he stood in front of their old home. As if the ebbing waves caught him, the receding water pulled him back. Terror and fear both pulling and pushing him.

“Your old house, Joseph?” the Timekeeper asked in a tone that suggested he knew precisely where they were.

“Yes,” was all Joseph could muster.

Their old house was bright yellow and white. Beautiful, resplendent. Nothing betrayed what had happened on the inside.

Joseph and the Timekeeper stood outside the gate and waited for the past version of him to storm out of the house.

“This was a horrible time, Timekeeper. It was the day I blamed my father for my mother’s death, and stormed out,”

The front door of the house swung open, and Joseph watched his old self climb into his father’s car and drive off without caution.

“Shall we go inside then?” the Timekeeper asked, as he moved closer to the house.

Without answering, Joseph took the first step and walked towards the window. He heard a faint sob coming from the house. It was his father.

“No-one deserves to suffer like this, Joseph. Especially not those who have already endured so much in their own lives,” the Timekeeper said, no emotion in his voice.

Joseph did not reply, but moved towards the entrance of the house. “Will he see us?” he asked.

“He cannot. This memory is not real unless you want it to be.”

Joseph moved without hesitation, made his way into the house, where he found his father cradled in a foetal position, clutching a photograph of his family.

“I am sorry, Emilia. I do not know how to do this without you,” he said, every word muffled by sobs.

“Look at him,” Joseph said in disgust. “He is such bastard. Such a coward. He did not love my mother when she was alive. Treated her like nothing; like a slave.”

The Timekeeper did not utter a word as they stood and watched Joseph’s father pick himself up off the floor and head to the room. He returned with a canvas and an art set.

Joseph did not know his father to be a painter. The only time he had ever created art was when he decorated the walls of their home with his mother’s blood. When her body would look like a painting of blue marks, crimson abrasion, and purple blotches. Yet, he placed the canvas in the middle of the lounge and start painting.

His strokes were deft, his eyes filled with tears, but focused, his gaze unlike anything Joseph had ever seen. This was a different side of his father, unbeknownst to him.

They stood and watched his father, in awe of what he had created. It was a clock, but time seemed to be running backwards in the painting. His family at the centre of the painting.

“Is that what he yearns for?” Joseph asked.

“Is that not what everyone yearns for, Joseph? An opportunity to rectify the mistakes of the past. A moment to glimpse back at every wrongdoing. To heal where we may have hurt?”

“Yet, we cannot. Not everyone has that opportunity.”

The Timekeeper gave Joseph a perceptive look.

His father moved away from the lounge and walked to the garage. The slam of the gate alerted them that he had found the rope he would use to take his own life.

He returned to the lounge with the rope in hand and what seemed to be a glass of his favourite whiskey. He would live his last moments the way he had always lived his life. Sad and inebriated.

“You have the power to stop this if you like, Joseph,” the Timekeeper said, as they watched his father enter the room.

Joseph stood dazed. As if the proverbial wave had crashed into him again, but he would not allow it to draw him back into the ocean and drown him.

“Why should I save him? He was never a good father or husband,” he said to the Timekeeper.

“How much do you know about your father, Joe?” the Timekeeper replied.

“Enough.”

“That is what we all think, Joseph,” he said as he moved closer to the entrance of the room. “Did you know that your father grew up in a hostel; the hostel of an orphanage? Did you know that he was orphaned when he was six years old?”

Joseph had a puzzled look on his face as he watched the Timekeeper speak.

“Your father never knew or understood love, Joseph. Not until he met your mother, and she changed him. But our past has a way of catching up with us no matter how fast we try to outrun it.”

“This never gave him the right to mistreat my mother,” Joseph replied, in a choked sort of way.

“It did not, but should we spend the rest of our lives paying for the mistakes we have made, even though everyone has forgiven us?”

The words struck Joseph like a bolt of lightning. He understood what the Timekeeper meant, and the words brought back a memory from his high school days.

“Alright then, I would love to save him,” Joseph said.

“Very well then,” he said.

And the moment was no longer like watching a memory, but fiction come to real life.

He rushed into the room, too slow for his liking. He found his father perched on the pedestal, ready to take the leap and have the rope choke the life out of him. He took the last swig of his whiskey and let the glass fall to the ground and shatter on impact.

“Father!” Joseph yelled as he rushed towards him. It felt as if time was moving slower than usual. He grabbed hold of his father’s leg. “Please don’t do this.”

He felt a hand on his head. “My boy. Is that really you? Am I not daydreaming?”

“Yes, Dad. It’s me. I came back. You don’t have to do this,” he sobbed. “You don’t have to do this.”

Joseph’s father untied the rope from his neck and got down from the pedestal. He embraced him the same way he did when he was just a little boy. This was all he ever wanted. To be loved and embraced by his father.

The moment felt like it would last forever, but as the Timekeeper entered the room, the memory dissipated before them once more.

Tell us: Do you think it is possible for men who beat up women to change; to deserve forgiveness?