Letter To A Shadow Man

Dear Dad,

You left me with your shadow and a tiny hole in my heart when I was four years old. It was the time when the world was filled with dreams and wonder, when illusions were sweet and reality was still kind. I was young and naïve, and mom was the ‘everything and everyone’ I needed to get by in life. Her love was all I knew and grew up with. It was powerful enough to comfort and console me, and drive away the darkness and the monsters dwelling in it. So I went on with the world, unaware of the tiny void that was temporarily sealed up in my heart, unaware that what you left me with, a shadow and a hole, are the two things I would have to learn to live with for the rest of my life.

But times changed. The autumn leaves started to fall and the nights became longer and longer. My innocence and blindness to the world soon waned away and that other part of the world I was protected from unfolded before me. I began to feel the hole. I fell into its void. Its magnetic pull was too strong a force to combat with and your haunting shadow could no longer be ignored. I was a half filled vessel and I tried with all my might to make myself whole. But the walls and castles I built inside my head to distract me from the horrors of the world never lasted long enough to make me feel safe and secure. All they did was crumble to dust and leave me empty in a place with no foundation. Nothing could stop the hole from growing bigger and bigger in my chest and sucking bit by bit the life force inside of me. 

Just as things bud and bloom, blossom and fade- all in its time, the time had come for you to leave. You left me again as you sailed towards the other side of the shore and this time, there’s no coming back. No more comforting visits, meet-ups or phone conversations to remind me that you are there because this time, you’re not there anymore. You’re gone. Just like that. A never-ending fog of darkness wreathed around me. The very existence of your being was wiped out from the face of earth in the glitter of a spark. And as if you never really mattered, as if you were nothing but an error of nature that had to be disposed secretly and inconspicuously, the world kept moving on and on. The sun did not even have the decency to hide its glorious, condescending face even for a brief second when you departed. And to magnify my sense of loss, regret and guilt, I didn’t know what you looked like, what you wore, or how it felt to touch the coffin where you were laid in.  I didn’t get to bid you farewell and see you off as your lifeless body was laid to sleep eternally, undisturbed by the maddening shrill and echoes of the world, deep beneath the ground that would now be called your home.

Almost three years have passed since then. Everything you are now is a sad and lonely memory, living and breathing inside my head. Your skin and flesh must have been rotten and reduced to dust by now, and only your bones and perhaps some of your dark, lustrous hair will be all that is left of you now. I still find it difficult to grasp the reality of you becoming no more. The man who nursed me, who taught me how to walk and whose arms felt like the safest place in the world is now nothing more than a skeleton, buried deep beneath the earth for the moths and earthworms to play and crawl upon like a playhouse. The little hole in my heart has now become a giant, all consuming, permanent black hole. Before, you left me with a shadow. Now you have become the shadow.  

I am learning everyday how to accept and live with these two things, to endure and move forward. The space you left at home, on the streets, on photographs and for the days to come has over the years turned into your indelible and unforgettable presence which I somehow find comforting. I haven’t bid you goodbye and I never will. You may not have played the biggest role in my life, but you are my shadow man and you will always be the biggest man in my life. My memories of you will linger on and on and the sea will never wash away the footprints you left on the sand. I know your soul is in a better place and that you are happier now than you ever were before. But I still think about you every day. You still talk to me in the land of dreams and I hear your voice in the sound of the wind. I hope you miss me too and always remember that you are dearly missed from this side of the shore.

                                                                                                       

                                                                                                                                       Always,

                                                                                                                                       Rinmuani