Finding Rest on All Souls’ Day

‘We are at your grave. Everyone is crying, everyone is wishing you goodbye. All I have are paralyzed emotions depicted by a numb countenance. When the saints go marching in their immaculate number, I hope you are among them.’ 

In my sleep, I did not see you. I closed my eyes hoping to catch a glimpse of you, urging me to keep going, to not look back, to see an image of you conjured by my desperate imagination. Yet, I did not see you, my longing did not filter into my dreams. Even my diary did not find space for you, my heart is hollow, nothing dwells here, not happiness, not sadness, not even grief for you. Maybe it is because I am yet to come to terms with reality; you are in a better place. 

For nearly a decade, I have been moved with pity, hope, numbness, confusion—all spurred by your frail frame. When your sickness first started, the changes were gradual, we were hoping and adjusting. Within a few years, the familiar and mild scent of old newspapers dissipated into a necessary stench of drugs and herbal concoctions. Prostate enlargement and Parkinson’s opened the door to this world of strange medicine. Your gait and hands were the casualties of this malignant period. Your staunch Catholicism loosened as protestant pastors and catholic priests flocked in and out of our house proffering spiritual remedy to a physical illness. 

A child’s image of his father is always incomplete, as he grows, he gets a clearer image of him, he realizes humans are complex, nuanced beyond hasty simplification. I was getting to know you, but the sickness changed you by the minute. Age also changed you. Were you changing or was I growing up? Or were we both changing at the same time?