The Last Memory of My Father

Do you dream? I do. I don’t just dream but I also remember my dreams vividly. The memories of my dreams are so vivid that sometimes I confuse my dreams with reality. It is always difficult to say which part of my memory is based on dreams and which part is on reality. If that was not enough I always mix up the timeline of my memories. If you ask me to speak from my memory, I would struggle to put them in chronological order for you to make any sense of it. Perhaps, that is the beauty of memories. Always so abstract.

Many see me as the silent type, but the truth is, that I struggle to express the intricate dance of my dreams and memories. Whenever I attempt to share, I find people either disinterested or wildly over-interpreting my words. Some friends have even suggested I seek psychological counselling.

I have one recurring memory in my mind that disturbs me. I have a strong memory of my father returning to our home after his death. I was exiting the bathroom, fresh from a bath,  when I saw him enter the room. I was not at all surprised to see him. I felt so relieved that he was back. I decided to spend time with him, which I could not do earlier as much as I would have liked to. For the next six months, I spent most of my time with him trying to understand him. I sat with him asking him all sorts of questions that were in my mind but I could not ask before. He patiently answered all of them.

One day, he just left us saying that his borrowed time was up. We let him go without any grief or regret as we had no other option.

After he left, I just realised that while he was there with us all the while I did not remember anything after he left.  I tried really hard to remember all the answers that he gave to my questions but it would not come back.

Yet, I feel his presence, busy with mundane tasks like balancing accounts for a local community club or sweeping the floor. Occasionally, he'd burst into the living room, laughing at a joke he'd remembered, eager to share it with us.

I wish I spoke to him more often.