Happy Daddy's Day Abbu!

I wish you were here. 

Dear Abbu,

I am sorry I havent written in awhile. I just got caught up with life -- a lot is happening. And then, you died. I didn't really see the point of continuing these emails.

Chachajan thinks you are still here. He started talking about quantum physics to say that at a fundamental level all particles are connected to all other particles and that you are still here, I am still connected to you. I think you are my father and I will be connected to you in more ways than that.

I'm trying really hard to not believe that was you talking to us through Sandy. I just can't take that leap of faith. I want somebody to logically, rationally explain it to me through science. But how would that woman know about half the things she was talking about? Did you really walk her through our house? Do you actually come to the upstairs landing?

Taans

From Nanajan: 21 February 2013

It’s 5.29 a.m in Toronto 4.29 p.m here as I start writing this and you have been asleep for more than a year now, pumputu, and we have wept for you 366 days as I am weeping now sitting here in my veranda on this sunny, bright and cool afternoon with the computer on my lap trying to write about you.

All through this past year I have tried to write about you, pumputu, and haven’t been able to because every time I tried I couldn’t continue, finding it impossible to put my feelings into words.  How does one talk to a little baby who has not even learned to talk, whose words are those squeals and gurgles and noises that still ring in my ears, who communicates with the look in her eyes, with her hands, who held out her hands with curled fingers indicating that she wanted to be picked up, who clapped with closed hands when she heard her favourite nursery rhymes even as she was feeling the pain in her little body, who suddenly pushed back on my chest as she was in my arms to look up at my face to see who was carrying her and who, though I was afraid she would start crying when she found it was not her ammu, put her little head back on my shoulder in reassurance, accepting me and knowing me perhaps as her Nanajan, and closed her eyes and tried to sleep.  Those little incidents, those looks of yours, the look of pain and discomfort on your face for more than a month, how the memory of those looks pains all of us now, pumputu. How do I talk to you who had only just begun to be spoken to by everybody in baby talk?  I know, though, that if I had talked to you at the time, when you left us, I would probably have been able to.  As the years go by and we keep your memory alive will I be able to speak to you or will it get even more difficult? If you had been here now, a prattly pranky over-energetic little two year old, I would have been talking to you on Skype, all of us would have talked to you, as we do with little two years old, trying to make you learn more and more words.  I can imagine doing that with you, as you sat on your alphabet mat in your living room up there in Toronto and as we watched you on our computer screen, watched you after your second birthday, watched you when there would be no more significance to 21^st February than it has had over the years.  Watched you grow up, heard you call us Nanajan and Naniamma, and maybe even on a happier and better second trip to your home than the one we actually took, walk with your hand in my hand on the trails, in the park, on the green grass in the yard, wheeled you around a supermarket in a cart, picked you up and carried you as you slept, put you on the sofa to sleep when we got home just as we used to do with your ammu when she was little.  I still do these things in my mind, see you grow up, go to school, ride a bike, maybe even if I was granted long life see you go to university, become an accomplished young lady, the boro apu to your siblings, maybe to your cousins.  It will all have to be in my head now, the same head that tries to hold all the memories it possibly can of your twelve months in the world.  I cannot picture you in the other world, pumputu, only in this one, and as the sunlight withdraws from the garden in front of me and as the little girls of the neighborhood come out riding their bikes and the birdcalls of the season sound louder than the noise of the traffic or the shouts of the little boys who are playing cricket on the field in the distance, I wish and wish that you were there still, in Toronto, in your own little pink bedroom sleeping the good sleep of the early morning before your ammu came to wake you up to take you to your baby sitter or just to check up on you now that it is 6.26 a.m and I have spent an hour remembering you more than writing about you.  

My lil cupcake,

This was supposed to be the winter I slapped a pair of skates on you and threw you out on to the ice. The winter that I finally learnt to skate just to be able to keep up with you. Instead, it's just cold and you are not here.

I hope there is an actual Rink of Dreams up there and that you are skating away to your hearts content.

I always thought that had you survived the experience we do not speak of, I would probably have wrapped my arms around you and never let you go. Ok, your mom might want to do that too, so I'd probably just hold on really tightly to your hand so that not one of God's creations could take you from me... but then I realised that I would probably still have slapped a pair of skates on you and thrown you out on to the ice. I also realised that I would have wanted you to do musical theatre. You wouldn't have had a choice. I would have dragged you to voice lessons. It's probably better this way, now you don't have to suffer through Khalamoni's obsessions.

Love always,

Khalamoni