A Letter to Dad

He sat there sipping his morning tea, staring blankly outside his window. The house was all quiet and empty, and the silence was eating. There were no card to write, or bouquets to send. He didn’t quite care the significance of all these days, but still, with Father’s Day around the corner, he felt an emptiness, a kind of loneliness, gnawing at him. 

“This is all a commercial ploy to entice gullible shoppers”, he tried to tell himself, but somehow he was buying his own words. And even if he wanted to partake in this day, who would he send it to? But he missed his dad, and this feeling kept building in him, as he kept it all bottled up, and filled with a sorrow.

He finally got up, and walked to the drawer where all the stationary was kept. He pulled a pen and a writing pad, and returned to the table.

In this day and age, if felt unusual to have a pen in his hand, with everything going digital. He began to write down his feelings, something that helped him many a time before.

Dear Dadda, he wrote. I hope you are doing well, wherever you may be. I am sure you’re in good health l, and free of the pain that afflicted.

I have been dreaming about you a lot, the past few days, and I don’t know if it was because I missed you, or if there were so many things that remained unsaid, or there was something you were trying to communicate to me. These dreams have left confused and unsettled, and therefore I thought I should write a letter to you , though not sure whether you would read it, or how should I send it to you.

I know I was never your favourite child, I know I didn’t always live up to your expectations, cause you made it known, from time-to-time in your actions and in your words. But then maybe it’s a misunderstanding, an illusion, a wrong perception, cause you also did show me love and tenderness, and that’s what I miss most.

I hate the fact that the last timei saw you in the living flesh, it was one of our disagreements. I so wished I knew it would the last time, I would try and make a more pleasant memory, cause the next time I saw you was when thy opened thr crate with your mortal remains.

I know you would not have been happy about the life that and who I choose live with it. You may not have accepted my truth, cause in a joke you told me so. But I wished you were hear to see how happy I am, and whom I am with. I am sure you would love out little family.

There’s so much I want to say to you, there’s so much I want to show you. But the most important thing I want to ask you, is that, did I make you proud?

I do hope you get to read this letter, though I don’t how I can send it to you?

But all I want to say to you is that I love you, I always have and I always your will.

As he wrote these words he felt a heaviness lift off his shoulder. His heart felt unburdened. 

He folded the letter and put it in an envelope. He drove to the cemetery and placed it on the final resting place of his father, along with a long stem rose. Hoping that his father would read it, his own way.