It's been 9 years since December 25th 2011. Christmas 2011. 9 years since the day I lost my father.
This post started out quite sad. I wanted to talk about the fact that while the excruciating pain may have been pushed to the past, the dull ache of absence persists in the small, surprising, everyday pages of daily life. I wanted to talk about a recent dream I had of my father where he was sitting on one of the sofas at home and I told him to wait right there while I got him ice cream and when I turned around he was gone. I woke up crying in the middle of the night. That's the sofa above which his photographs now hang.
I wanted to talk about how I still want to reach out to him or call him and tell him about the million different versions of Xavier Cugat's 'Malaguena' I keep finding on Spotify. And speaking of Spotify, how easy it would be to find all the songs that he had made a list of from his adolescence ("How?" my friends ask. "How did he find so much rare (for India) music in those days (1950s) when there wasn't any YouTube search engine?"), songs which we painstakingly combed the Net for and made collections of on iTunes and mp3 CDs.
I wanted to talk about how I look for him as I walk the mosaic floors of my childhood home and dig through his old accounts records (neatly handwritten), his collections of stickers, stamps and flags of countries for me, his notebooks of World Cup cricket scores, and in the mirror as I gaze at my large wide eyes and long hands. I am no surgeon but I see him in myself more and more each day. The chip on my shoulder gets steelier. My affinity for knowledge and culture grows deeper. I wanted to talk about how I look for him in the home he built, in the tall old buildings of Mount Road of his childhood, and in the green landscapes of East Godavari district. I wanted to talk about how I still look for clues and signs that he is talking to me, advising me, guiding me, loving me...still.
I wanted to talk about how I visited the land of his birth a few months ago, 10 years after I visited the exact home and village of his birth. I wanted to talk about how I took his son in law for the first time to the beautiful, clean and gracious city nearby and how we soaked in the majesty of the grand, holy river that defined his life and beyond and commemorated the occasion - my husband sweetly and respectfully saluting a larger than life man he had never met but loves all the same. Even as he copes with having been without his own father for so many years, a father whose legacy frames his life and work. I wanted to talk about how I heard parts of him in the river's breeze, in the language of the people, in the quietness of the air. I wanted to talk about how happy I felt.
Then I realised, this post isn't sad. I miss my father at every turn, in every corner, in every vast scape and every grand plan. But that doesn't make me sad. The fact that my memories of the little things aren't sharp enough and the fact that I may have missed being fully present in the ordinary days that were actually spectacular, yes, those realisations make me sad. The bittersweet fact that where I live and go nowadays, I am less his child and more my own person.
But, he lives on in me....and having left me with an enormous soundtrack as counsel/pep talks/compass helps.
I wanted to talk about family (mother in law and husband) who gave me extra long hugs today, friends who sent emails and messages (Nusy, Tabi, Pooja Akka, Jillian Aunty, Sway) of remembrance and how their reminders of being aware of this significant day made me feel better. Remembering and acknowledging is all you need sometimes. I wanted to talk about my mother making his favourite foods throughout this past year (having spent most of it alone) and praying for him (and talking to him) on days when there wasn't any occasion or special day necessarily... and that meant even more. I wanted to talk about how being a not-so secret Santa (especially encouraged and part-executed by a very determined, tender husband) made me feel I was celebrating Nanin and all the goodness, childlikeness, music, laughter and eternality he represents.
Maybe I don't need to say anything at all. Because my father, like love and everything else that truly matters in my soul's journey, goes beyond words and memories and ephemeral objects and places...which are wonderful and precious, nevertheless, but...
What was, is and will always be.
