The fucked up thing is how for the most part you remain a stranger and truthfully I have enough of those and that kind of sucks but that is not what this story is about.
It was a Tuesday or Wednesday or Thursday or some annoying day like that. I think I had a CAT or assignment due and people in the same room were reading for it but I could not be bothered. You know me. We were seated and I was using my ignorance to give you an idea of how to go about writing your chapter 2 although truthfully I knew nothing and was trying to act all Perfect Know it All A student. Also we all know that was a lie. I was stressed about my thesis too and it was one of those moments when I was hiding my loneliness and stress behind hearty laughs and we were talking everything. Mostly families, and how it sucks to lose yours. You told me Mrs lost her mum too and for a split second she ceased to be another fictional character I have heard of but never met. I could feel her pain. I was that girl too. And I could see you trying all you could to numb her pain even though it wasn’t working but you kept trying. I remembered him too, the guy who did that for me or tried to and missed him, for a minute. But then I stared at you and this overwhelming sense of respect that even now still won’t go away overcame me because, you just like he, didn’t have to.What struck me is how you became that guy again. In that moment you sort of took me back to a familiar pain and unconsciously sort of took it away. You probably never knew it. But I'm writing this with the hope you do so that the next time someone tells you you are a bad excuse of a person you can come back to this memory.
You sat there with me. I went on and on about how dad was such a phenomenal person and went name dropping about his position because quite frankly no one seems to give a fuck anymore and I just wanted to reminisce. I remember not shutting up. And it’s funny because that is one thing I ordinarily know how to do. But you sat there and did the most amazing thing when I bragged about his achievements, you grabbed my machine and told me to Google his work. I could be exaggerating but you were impressed when you saw those results. And I guess I felt a tinge of pride too. But even more, I wished Dad was around because gentlemen like you were the breed I would proudly introduce as friend, (and risk having my family asking all forms of questions even though there was nothing going on.)
See to you, it could have been just another midmorning wasted on this girl who seemed so elusive and detached from everyone but in that moment I felt something greater. I felt that someone cared.
And that is the one thing you crave the most when you lose a loved one. The sun has this nasty habit of insisting on rising and setting normally every day after a loved one passes on. For every person that dies more people get married, or fornicate and have babies who grow up and hit development milestones and go on to become amazing human beings. With time it starts to feel like that one awesome human being who once was in my life gets forgotten. And that sucks because this person, this loved one, once meant the world to me and it kills me to know that the world barely even acknowledges the fact that they existed.
So to have somebody willing to hear me rant on and on about said departed person’s awesomeness, that feels great.
There are moments after Dad’s passing I wish I could forget. The moments when we show up at events and feel so ordinary because there is no one to speak for us. The times when the people who once greeted us before just pass us because we are pretty much nobody without him. The times when I share a picture of him on social media and family, friends or acquaintances who I barely even see anymore kind of send me texts to the effect that I should grow the fuck up and get over it.
But then there are times which I pray I never forget. People who I always remember in my prayers because their kind gestures meant everything. Gentlemen who happily help young girls who do need to get over it but refuse to by sparing a minute to help them Google search the articles their father's wrote.
When I pray, I just want you to know I say a special Bless him for Tall Ninjas like you.
