Hey Dad!

I couldn't have imagined while dad was alive the specific times that i would miss him after he departed. Most often its when i'm driving alone, especially in the beat up old Accord dad refused to sell simply because i forbade him to. I forbade him to, HAH! as if i could forbid my father from doing anything, but i tried and he cared enough to obey. I can almost see him sitting there in the passenger seat, that stern pakhtoon expression of his , humming along to the pashtu songs he loved under his breath.
Sometimes its at the dining table, where i now fill his seat at the head of the table and unknowingly mimic his exact pose, elbows resting on the arm rests, hands in lap, feet resting on their toes with the heels raised as he would shake his legs and cluck his tongue with his sunday smile and his sunday hair.
Its still not easy for me to talk about him, two years down and God knows how many more to go, i still mention him unless its for practical purposes. I carry his memory within me, i can't share it, i don't know how to... i lose my temper when mom mentions him to shame me into doing something, it hurts to think that he is gone or that his not being here should somehow make me renege from the person he helped turn me into. I try not to do the thing i wouldn't do if Dad was alive, i try to pretend that he was never there or perhaps that he still is here and that life simply goes on without too much of a change or too much of a tragedy. I tell myself everyone MUST live with this sense of being untethered, this overwhelming absence of someone who ought to be there. I try not to make the decisions he would have made, i try to make up my own mind but i still seek his approval, would he do this, i don't care but would approve of me doing that is still a very important validation for me and the inability to receive that validation, that pat on the back or that admonition stare is easily the most grievous of losses. Somehow he is most distant when i visit his grave, i just don't feel him there, the reverence i feel, the fear even perhaps, i will clean the place if its dirty, i will water the plants not because i like clean places but because he did and his grave must simply be in pristine condition but i don't feel HIM there, just his expectations. I wonder if there's something wrong with me, if i'm not a good enough son, if i didn't love him enough but then i find myself unable to talk in the middle of a conversation just because i have said something i heard dad say, or i have remembered some conversation i had with him which suddenly makes more sense than it ever did before and i know that it doesn't even matter what kind of a son i am, the only thing that matters is what kind of a Father he was because that is why i miss him.