September 8 was my dad's birthday, I know exactly how old he would have been on that day, but I am not going to mention it here. Writing it out would mean reducing it to a number and that would bring to mind another number the number of years I have had to live without him. It is a double digit number but encompasses so many moments that mean lost chances, moments stolen from us.
The grief of losing a parent never dies and somehow this birthday, I ended up missing him more than ever. I miss having him around me, miss hearing his voice, his laugh; I even miss him being angry with me. So many years have gone by that I cannot recall his face with absolute clarity and yet I miss him. My clearest memory is of me running to open the gate when he would come home, so that he did not have to get out of the car to do so. I would wait till he backed the car into the garage and in the tiny distance between the garage and the house (twenty steps or so) I would update him as to everything that had happened during the day. It was a standing joke, Mom asking me if I had left anything for her to say and I smugly replying in the negative. I miss that conversation, more than the conversation I miss being the daughter I was.
Losing a parent reduces you to less than half a child and that loss never goes away. With time you do not allow it to hurt you but then it never goes away. And the strangest thing is that you are never sure as to what would trigger that pain of loss, it could be as mundane as crossing a street and it strikes that I am where I am because he is no longer there. Or I see a scene in a movie or hear a dialogue and we are like Dad would have liked it' or can you imagine what dad would say' (this is a rhetorical question for my brother and I can very well imagine what dad would say and do). Time dulls the pain but it never goes away.
But what I miss the most is seeing the pride in my father's eyes. He would have been proud of some, my clearing the CA examinations, both inter and final in one sitting; building a career, of sorts (I am at times not sure if I have a proper career) and a few others. There have also been a few personal failures (by the generally accepted social norms) and a couple of professional lows, which might disappoint him and which could hurt him. I will never know. He would have loved his grandson, would adore him and all the rules which were ironclad for his children would have been waived off for his grandson. I can never see. He would have retold all the stories he told us, I will never hear them.
Time and destiny have reduced my father from a man to a face in the photograph, who is alive only in our memories, which are also slowly fading. What does not fade is the grief and the knowledge that even after so many years, I still miss my dad.
Arjun
