Happy Father's Day

It's father's day today. My usual routine every year would be going to the music store and buy my father a CD or DVD he loved. Ie Modern Talking, ABBA or Boney M. Very 70s. His era indeed.

Last year I bought him an ABBA live DVD. He watched it with me and enjoyed it. He smiled. That's worth the purchase, man, despite me being broke at that moment of time.

This year, he is no longer there. With his passing last March, I don't really know what to do during Father's Day upon seeing my friends wishing their dads online - Facebook, Twitter - everywhere. I would love to say the same, too. "Happy father's day, Abah. If there's one thing I am proud of in life, it is being your daughter." But I guess he already knew that by now. I hope.

So I guess I'll have coffee later, alone, reminiscing the old times. It is always nice to do that but the act of trying to remember can be quite hard. Memories tend to fade sooner or later no matter how hard we try to grip on it. It has been very difficult for me to express my sadness and grief to other people. It had not been successful. Every time there are people around, I would switch to the other side of me - happy, stable, grateful, confident. But when I am alone, my wall of pretense is lifted. I am left with only myself, the person I really am - a daughter still coping with the emptiness due to her father's death. How does a daddy's girl stay a daddy's girl without a daddy?

Haruki Murakami, in his book Sputnik Sweetheart, wrote that after experiencing a loss, humans are often left with no choice but to move on and continue living. However, the loss would surely take away something that is part of him/her and like a parasite, slowly affecting everything else. In the end, what's left is a human shell with a routine, without a soul.

I do believe that when people we love die, something within us die with him. Now I know what it is - joy.

It is not impossible for to be happy. Happiness is abundance if we just look for it, I believe. However, we will never be as happy as we were when our beloved was alive, there, for us to share the happiness. To make him proud. To see a smile on his face. To hear his voice at the end of the line. Only then, we realize these moments with him were our last peak of happiness. With him being gone, happiness will never be the same again.

Sadly, most people, me included, would realize how important these small things are after losing the beloved. During my adult life, I have only said 'I LOVE YOU' to my father once during early 2011. It was an awkward 'I LOVE YOU' - me and my father were hardly sentimental people, more like snobbish serious over-achievers lacking in humour - but looking back now, I am grateful that I said it. At least it can be something I can hold to until I die.

So love your fathers. Get over the problems you have with him. Seriously, they won't matter once he's gone.

~ Talking from experience. Duh. Double Duhh ~

Me and my father and my little bro. See how serious we

were in the company of each other? 

ABBA - SUPER TROUPER. Dedicated to my father. Man, this made me cry for no reason.