Even as I wake, I do not feel good. Heavy yet empty at the same time. Absence is its own weight. Some days are less awful; I acquire some motivation, some minor inspiration, but it doesn’t last. Being awake is a trudge, a chore, a constant battle to move through actions and events without dwelling on the reality of my father’s absence. The silent phone, empty of the details of his day-to-day movements. The stories and memories no one else will ever care to know. The knowledge that I have lost the only person who knew me my whole life, the only link connecting all the different versions of me, the only person who contextualised my life through the history of his own. I am an orphan now. Rootless and alone without anchor. That knowledge is constant, the fact immutable. How do people live like this? Immobilised in a steel trap of the unchangeable. I am vulnerable in a new, disorienting way. There will never be a safe space, a home to go to. No port in the storm. No one to tell me it’s alright. Nowhere to hide from the world, should the need arise.
The irony is not lost on me; I loathed my father’s house and refused to take refuge there even when I probably should have. But it was there, just the same. A security blanket for the worst, my choice to eschew it at least a partial declaration that things really weren’t that bad, honest. But the door was always open. And now I’ll be opening it just a few more times to silence. No rustle of slippers or blaring television. No cricket scores or canned laughter from old sit-coms. No cork being popped, oven turned on as I crossed the threshold straight into open arms and nonsense jokes, the ancient catchphrases he carried from his own childhood. Just more of the emptiness that follows death.
That silent phone that used to buzz over and over as we shared jokes, made plans, spoke for hours about every silly detail of our days. That would always be answered, even in the middle of the night, even after a bitter row. The only number I know by heart. The number I would call every time I lost my purse or needed help converting pounds to kilos. Now I lapse into myself, waiting for nighttime, when I don’t have to pretend anymore that I’m okay, that I’m myself, because I’m not. Just words and actions to fend off reality, empty conversations because I have nothing to say.
I lost my father piece by piece; dementia chiseling away at the bright, sharp brain that he loved to keep busy. I took time to accept the realities of no more home-cooked meals, no more birthday cards. At least, I thought I did, but the losses seem fresh anew, as if part of me at least held back some hope that one day Shanti would reemerge fully formed, nattering about his latest bargain from Marks and Spencer and the state of the Sri Lankan cricket team, planning his next group theatre trip and organising his cricket club AGM, taking me out to dinner while fielding phone calls about umpiring schedules. That denial is enjoying biting me in the backside. One does not come back from dementia, but while he was alive I could still believe it wasn’t a one-way path. I’d say I was foolish, but actually I’m glad. I wouldn’t wish the reality of his loss upon myself for a single extra second.
We lived in an odd mutually dependent symbiosis, but it suited us, as it suited us to choose our homes based on our own needs rather than each other’s, the phone bridging the distance instantly. The lack of proximity, our independent lifestyles, made our relationship a choice, not an obligation. That was something special. When that fundamental parameter shifted with his illness, I was resentful, as I am now. I had not given consent to let go of how things were, how we were, as I have not in his passing. Something that had been mutually negotiated now out of my hands, leaving me powerless and alone. So very, very alone.
My father was one of the last of his generation, outliving most of the friends and relatives who made up his story. I thought I understood how lonely that was but I don’t think I really did until he left me with my own story rent and broken. Unsubstantiated. What use are memories when only you remember? What use are traditions once there’s no one left to keep them with?
Now, as he has gone, I too am eroded. There’s no one to tell stories about my childhood, no more conversations where we laugh as I correct him about whose class I was in and who I fell out with when. No one to know or remember all our silly little things, like the time my dad got in a huff and stormed off in downtown Colombo, or our nighttime drives down dark winding Wiltshire countryside roads singing along to musicals on cassette after cricket matches. No one will understand our mutual contentment as we sat quietly together reading at the swimming pool at the Mount Lavinia Hotel sipping our beer, or enjoying lazy afternoons at my auntie and uncle’s house. These and their endless array of friends are now consigned to the vestiges of my mind alone. All these things no one will ever know or care about that I’m left to carry.
These things now exist only in my head, they are meaningless to anyone else, boring and irrelevant. The part in the conversation where people laugh politely and move things along. Everything is empty and bleak, a void of other people where I bounce unseen off the sides, clinging to my silent phone, wishing with all my heart for that familiar hand to reach out and hold mine.
No, I do not feel good. It will be a long time before I’ll feel close to good again.
Cultural Cuckoo 