I stood and walked up to the altar. I could feel everyone’s eyes on me. I saw Melissa and she smiled at me. I smiled back and unfolded the paper in my hands.

 

Every year, he would sit outside that old, rusting building, in the same old brown bunny suit. His sign changed though, every year it was different. My friends and I would always see him, just sitting there. One year, we watched him for most of the day. Nothing happened. I only really started going out with my friends when I turned fourteen. Apparently, I was then old enough and mature enough, but in hindsight, it might not have been the best idea on my parents part. It was the following year that we first saw Derek. The guy wasn’t bad. He didn’t kill anyone. He didn’t offer us drugs, he was just a lonely man who sat beside an old building in a bunny suit. I remember when we first spoke to him. Henry was the first to suggest it. It was quickly shot down though because we had all had the phrase ‘stranger danger’ drilled into our head since we were practically born. I, on the other hand, wanted to speak to him. I had always wanted to know why he sat outside that building, why he wore the suit, and what the signs meant. So, Henry, Jack and I went over and spoke to the guy.

 

“Hey,” Henry said quietly, still wary of the man. The bunny head turned sharply to face us. All three of us jumped back in surprise. The man raised his hands and slowly took off the head. I tried to smile. The man placed the head down beside him and smiled at us. As soon as his teeth shone through his pale pink lips, we all relaxed. We had been expecting him to be some homeless tramp with yellow rotting teeth, a dishevelled man with a patchy beard and mismatched eyes. But he had clean, almost glistening, skin. His dark eyes were comforting and made us feel safe and secure.

 

“Hey there,” he replied. The three of us looked at one another and then proceeded to have a long conversation with the man. We didn’t talk about him, he seemed to push that subject away from the conversation. We kept our personal details safe from him, only giving him our first names. When he did ask about our school, we politely told him that we still didn’t know him that well and that it was too personal. He nodded and understood. After about two hours of talking to him, we made our excuses and left. I turned back to see the man place the bunny head on his head and return to his frozen state. We always went to see the man after that, and after a few years, we told him more about us. The man seemed to appreciate us, he didn’t seem to mind the group of teens talking to him yearly. He remembered everything we said. It was nice to talk to another adult who cared about us. Eventually, we all went off to university or to different cities. We told him we would try and come back every year to talk to him, and we kept it. But, slowly, one more of us forgot about the kind man. Until it was just five of us. It had started with twelve. A couple of years later, I had finished university and was back living with my parents. Only Jack was living near the area, so he and I met up in town. We spent the day together, caught up and laughed about old times. It was getting late, so Jack made his excuses to return to his new wife. We said farewell to one another and I started home. I hadn’t realised that it was the time of year that Derek would be outside his old building, and I hadn’t realised that I was walking past it until I heard his familiar voice.

 

“Dennis?” I spun around and saw the smiling man. He hadn’t aged well since the previous year. His hair had become longer and he had started to have a beard, but it wasn’t growing well around his chin. His dark eyes still had their comforting shine and laughter behind them. I was relieved to see him, hoping that I wouldn’t miss this year. He told me how he had been waiting all day for one of us to walk by and say hello, and he was about to give up. I felt my heart sink. I was clearly the last person who remembered the man. I sat beside him and we started to talk. He asked me about Melissa, and we talked about how my uni life had gone. However, the conversation died down, and we were sitting in the December breeze, our breath turning into steam as we exhaled.

 

“Derek?” I asked quietly. The man turned to look at me, a smile spreading across his face.

 

“Yeah?” He replied, in his friendly tone.

 

“Why do you do this?” I asked nervously. The last time we had asked that question, the man was quiet until we changed the subject. He looked away and at the bunny head that sat beside him.

 

“I suppose you’ve had that question sitting on your mind for a while now,” he said in a low voice. I patted the man’s arm. Derek turned to me and smiled. This time, his smile was one of melancholy. “Before I moved here,” he said. “I was living in a town south of here. I lived there with my wife and two children, Holly and Miranda.” He smiled as he said their names. “I loved them, and my wife.” He allowed his head to fall back against the wall behind him and a loving smile appeared on his face. He closed his eyes and sighed. “She was so beautiful you know? She had short brown hair and beautiful emerald forest green eyes. Her smile could freeze a room and captivate anyone. She could start a conversation with anyone and come away with their life story. We met back in university, she was in the wrong class and didn’t realise until I leaned over and told her that her title was wrong. We married three years later and Holly was born the following year. When I saw Holly lying next to her mother, I wanted to freeze time and hold that moment forever. Lying on her back, light gurgling noises coming out of her every so often. Seven years on, and we were still together. We moved into our own home and painted it ourselves.” Derek’s face started to fall as a tear ran down his cheek. He then turned to me, looking at me dead in the eye. “When you find that person Dennis, you’ve got to hold onto them, with everything you’ve got. You may not want to, you may hold back, but you’ll regret it if you don’t. Give it your all.” He turned away from me and his hand fell, slowly stroking the bunny head beside him. His loving smile returned.

 

“It was four years before I met you that she, out of the blue, with no reason, slammed divorce papers on my desk. The one we painted together,” he whispered quietly. His eyes flashed to me. I sat there, urgently waiting for him to continue, captivated by his story. He tried to smile and he sat up, wiping the tears away and sniffed. “She wanted everything. The kids. The house. Everything. I…I didn’t know what to do. I was forced out of my own home and I moved into a small flat near the centre of town. And I was promised…Promised! That I would see my little girls once a year. It was all I could get!” Derek was angry now, his fists clenched, and face red. Tears were now streaming down his face and dampening his bunny suit. “I don’t even know what I did.” He said quietly, gently grasping at the fur on his suit, pulling it out, thread by thread.

 

“I have sat here every day for the past nine years for my girls to come running into my arms.” He looked down into his lap, his voice suddenly fragile. “Their favourite animal was a bunny. I was going to get them one for Christmas that year before my wife…” he trailed off and let his head slump down even further. I was silent. I had seen this man for the majority of my teenage years happy and smiling. To see him breakdown and sob was a different experience. I didn’t know how to react. I had never encountered anything like this before. “I’m sorry,” Derek whispered. “I’ve made you uncomfortable, I’ll leave.” He stood slowly, keeping his head down. He picked up his bunny head and sign and trudged away. Quickly I stood, still lost for words, so I said the first thing that came to my mind.

 

“I’ll see you next year Derek,” I called. The man stopped and turned, a small smile covered his lips. He nodded. In the year between our next meet up, I tried to track down his wife, going into the next town and searching through files and reports. Nothing came of it. By now I had moved out of my parent’s house and moved in with Melissa. When it came to the time to see him, I almost ran to that old, rusting building. I expected to see him sitting on the floor, his bunny head on the floor and his usual friendly smile plastered on. But he wasn’t there. I waited all day, but there was no sign of him. He had never told me where he lived, so this was the only place I knew he would be. It was nearly ten o’clock by the time I left for home. As I arrived back home, Melissa ran to me and said that the police had called. I called the number she was given, and I was told that Derek had been found…that day.

 

I patted the coffin and folded the paper back into my pocket.

 

He had me as his emergency contact.

 

I saw Henry drop his head into his hands, Jack rubbing his back comfortingly.

 

What can I say about Derek?

 

I looked at their faces, Henry, Jack, Thomas. Tears filled my eyes and streamed down my face.

 

He was one of the best men I knew, and I knew very little about him. Only that he was a man who had everything taken from him. He fills most of my teenage memories. He was an amazing man, who had nothing. But I’m glad I could be a part of his life.

 

I stepped down from the altar and walked back to my seat. Beside me, Melissa intertwined our fingers and rested her head on my shoulder. Derek’s words echoed through my head again. “When you find that person Dennis, you’ve got to hold onto them, with everything you’ve got. You may not want to, you may hold back, but you’ll regret it if you don’t. Give it your all.” My mouth was tugged into a small smile as I watched the coffin get gradually lowered into the grave. I waited until the earth buried the coffin, leaving a brown rectangle. Finally, I placed his cardboard sign upon the fresh dug earth, the last one he wrote.

 

“Maybe today, I’ll see my girls.” I read as I walked away, arm wrapped around Melissa, seeing his wife standing over the grave, her face cold.