55

[I originally wrote this piece on 24th September, 2016 for my dad since it was his birthday. I then decided not to post it anywhere as i wasn't completely satisfied even after editing a few things here and there. But here i am anyway, still slightly unsatisfied (with i don't even know what) but posting it away because it's 2018 and i made a commitment to myself to blog every once in a while from now on.]

55

    Happy 55^th Birthday Apa. You were just 49 years young when you voyaged towards the great unknown. And from the moments that stretched between your lonesome passing six years ago and now, at this moment as I hopelessly try to make sense of my thoughts and emotions and turn them into words that can somehow reach you, I have remembered you. Krauss was right when she said, “Absence is the only constant thing. You can get free of anything except the space where things have been”. I guess it’s our hamartia as humans - our fatal flaw – that we never learn. We take love and the people we love for granted until they disappear. We bereave love of its place to belong, a space it can call home while we become prisoners of our own selves, caged and haunted by the love we fail to show. We vow to learn, to love better next time. But we never learn, do we? 

    You would have been 55, with grey hair fiercely marking its territory on your head and the wrinkled lines of your face growing more tangled and intricate, narrating the hardships you’ve endured and the wisdom you’ve accumulated with age. You should have seen 55, with the load on your shoulders a little lighter, your inner demons silenced and the ruined bridge between us mended and rebuilt as I get a little wiser, more forgiving and understanding of the perpetual loneliness you must have felt all the time. But I cannot wish you back to life. I cannot love you back to life. Your days on earth were marked with toil and yearning. You drank your life away, but the stench of bottled liquor could never drown the scent of loneliness and lovelessness you reeked of. Your life was a history of silent battles fought between you and the demons you befriended. You should have been loved. You deserved so much love than the little of it you received. But you were made to live your life love-less, mutilated from and failed so tremendously by the one you gave life to. 

    Your absence…. How do I begin to speak of it? An absence. But also a presence. An absent presence. A present absence. Absence/Presence - I no longer know which is which. You have metamorphosed into a grander, holier and all-encompassing being that defies the boundaries of time, space and existence. Like the stardust in my bones, you seep into every fibre of my being. Indelible and hauntingly beautiful, I am made aware of you. You are kept alive inside of me. You are loved. And when I think of you, I no longer see absences or empty spaces. I see you. Everywhere. In everything. You are the ocean and I, an ocean faring-mind wandering-modern day Ulysses, and I return in waves, again and again, to you.