I’ve been avoiding writing this all week. Anything, anything, but this. Tears start to well while Iris by The Goo Goo Dolls blares in the background. The self-deprecative humour that is so often portrayed on these pages has possibly made everyone believe that I’m a cry baby - and a proud one, at that. The truth is, my internal sadness finding release in such a natural, healing way is rare for me. As the tears well and finally start falling down my cheeks, I’m now concerned that the grief is a bottomless pit that will eventually drown me.
God, I don’t understand how it doesn’t get easier. I don’t get how I can be sitting here, a good decade (actually, almost 11 years) after I’ve lost you and feel like not a single day has gone by. I can be okay and detached from the grief for months on end and then boom! - as soon as 22 December approaches, I crumble into a ball of mush and become overcome by the love that I’ve lost.
I guess this is a good time to say: Happy birthday, dad. Today, we would be celebrating your 62nd birthday. Today, we are celebrating it. This letter won’t make much sense because there’s so much I want to say, so much that I want to get off my chest. But bare with me - your one and only girl has gotten more chaotic in thought (and let’s be honest, behaviour) as she’s grown older.
62, dad! What the fuck?! Actually, you know what’s more fucked up?! (Excuse my language daddy, the world has truly done a number on me since you saw me last). You took your last breath just two months after your 51st birthday. If I were to immortalise you and keep you at 51 forever, as I already have, we would have a 20-year age gap. And the closer I get to your age, I think how incredibly ridiculous it is that you died at 51. It’s so young, dad. It’s far too young.
My memories of you are waning, dad. They are disappearing and all I have left in my mind are glimpses of you. I usually try not to recall the final two times I saw you - first, dead in your hospital bed and then again, your embalmed body in a simple wooden coffin, rolled into the living room. The same living room where you found my friends and I sipping Brutal Fruits (lol, you actually handled that very well). The same living room you would roam around in, your voice lighting up the entire space.
I remember those images as clear as day, how I looked at you in what was to be your last place of resting before we cremated your body, and I just thought: What? This just isn’t my dad. Encouragements from family members to give you a kiss goodbye continually sound in my head but it was bizarre — this body, this smile, this face — they couldn’t possibly be yours.
And so, let me rather recall the last times I saw and experienced you full of life. That’s how I prefer it. I choose to remember how we sat on the couch together during my second-year university end-of-year vacation and watched Bringing Down the House. I couldn’t have known this was a moment I was meant to cherish above every other one prior. I’ve blamed myself for years for cutting the movie short to go out with friends. How could I have left you like that? What kind of daughter was I? It took me a long time to realise that I was simply a 20-year-old who had no idea what was coming; that she would lose one of the biggest parts of her life in only a couple months’ time. I now think she deserves all my compassion, as I know you this is all you feel for her.
The time I hugged you goodbye before returning to Cape Town. “I love you, my girl,” you said, as you always, always did. I can’t remember if I said it back but I can’t imagine that I wouldn’t have. My last “I love you” in person. The words that save me from convincing myself that maybe we weren’t as close as I recall. That other people have closer relationships with their fathers. Of course they do. Theirs didn’t die when they were teenagers.
I wish more people would mention your name. I wish you were spoken of more often. I want to hear every single story about you, every little encounter you had with others. Every little impression you left on them. I want to know everything. Like, how you broke your arm when you were six running away from dogs after obeying your mom’s (my beautiful second guardian angel, Mummy Gugu) instructions. She shared this with me when I had the pleasure of getting to truly know her on our weekly calls in rehab before she passed. Another layer of grief. So many layers, constantly being covered and uncovered, over and over again.
I’m so scared you’ll be forgotten. You being dead used to be one of the first things I mentioned to absolute strangers when we started speaking, it was such a prevalent and gaping hole in my life. How could I not mention that you existed? How could I not bring up the essential fact the man of my heart no longer walks the earth? These days, I simply forget to bring it up. Sometimes, new acquaintances don’t know that I’ve lost you until we’ve cemented a friendship. I wonder what they think. I wonder if they just assume that I come from a single parent household and that’s the way it’s always been. When your name finally comes up, I feel so guilty, dad. It’s like I’ve erased you from my life. I want to shake the shoulders of that person standing opposite me and tell them; tell them that your loss was the biggest of my life (and one of many, all impactful but not nearly as devastating). I’m dying to let them know the magnitude of the grief, the seriousness of the loss. Do you actually understand how much this man meant to me?
Sorry, in the most unprofessional writing practice, this is an aside that I needed to share. Readers, I’m speaking to you now. I’m balling my eyes out writing this when my best friend (read: love of my life, soul sister, everything) Chevy calls me from Finland, right at this moment. I hesitate, I don’t want to be taken out of my writing and more so, I’m an emotional wreck - reason for me to pick up, right? She asks what’s wrong and I tell her that I’m writing for something for my dad. She tells me that she also had a little bit of a teary moment. The reason? A woman she encountered was wearing the exact same perfume as her mom, who died three months before my dad. We didn’t know each other then so we never had the privilege of meeting each other’s late parents. And as soon as I put down the phone and I unpause the song, I realise that I’m listening to Someone’s Watching Over Me by Hilary Duff (don’t judge, it’s from my Mulaudzi Angels playlist for my grandparents and dad). I don’t know what your beliefs are, but go figure.
It’s your 11th birthday in heaven and moments like the one described above are a stark reminder that death isn’t the end. How could I not believe that I’m meant to see you again? I was truly drowning there for a second, dad, just as I feared. The grief overtook me. And you sent me a simple message in the form of a friendship I believe you had some part in orchestrating. A friend that can call me at just the right moment and I can speak about how much I miss you (dearly, more than anything). Even a decade later. And we can cry together. And then laugh at the end of the call — all within three minutes. And tell each other how much we love each other. Thank you for these angels, dad. There are a few.
I am more like you every day. I look in the mirror and see your face. What a blessing, what a privilege. I will forever speak your name and I won’t be ashamed of the fact that thinking of you often still brings me pain. And as the days and months and years go by - “I’ll keep a part of you with me and everywhere I am, there you’ll be.”
Grief is not linear (same goes for sobriety, in my experience). By writing this piece, you are keeping your father’s spirit and memory alive. It’s beautiful. I can feel the love you two shared. Thank you for letting us witness that. I hope it helped, getting these words out. I lost my dad 4 years ago and my heart still breaks a million times over. My dad, like yours, also has a voice that lit up the entire space he was in. And a laugh that would cackle - it was infectious.
Reading this made me feel together in grief. Happy heavenly birthday to your sweet dad. ❤️
Oh this got me. I relate to this so much. I miss my dad, too. Thank you for this, I am crying right along with you <3 Sending you peace.