I never even got to say goodbye

Abbu's really dead. Rashed (one of my half brothers) and I were emailing. He said abbu had a stroke last Eia when he visited our sister, Rehana's house in Singapore and has been suffering for a couple of months before he died. He said they buried him the very next day. He didn't even tell me the exact date abbu died.

And all this time I thought I wouldn't care less. I accepted the possibility of him being dead while subconsciously hoping that tucked somewhere, my father was still alive and kicking, frowning, even at death's face. But now he's finally, officially dead, taken away by the Gods of Sulfur and Ash.

All those months, he was in Singapore, while I kept putting off trying to contact him, afraid he might reject me, afraid he didn't care anymore. I loved him so much. I'm still in denial that I'll never be able to hug his huge tummy; that I'll never be able to smell the smoke in his breath (or at least his stench, his familiar fuzzy stench because he stopped smoking); that I'll never be able to see his brows furrow or hear him laugh again, because I'd almost forgotten what his voice sounds like. Shit. I don't remember how his voice sounds like anymore. I'll know it when I hear it, but I'll never hear it anymore.

He used to put me to sleep with tales of giants. He said giants liked to eat up little girls who didn't sleep at night, but if a giant did come, he'd protect me from them, or hoist little me up his shoulders to become a giant myself. I believed him, because when I was on his shoulders, I could touch the ceiling. And I knew a lot of people were scared of him.

I'll never be able to know if he still thought of me and my brother again. I'll never be able to know if he wondered how we were doing, because I wondered constantly. I wondered how his lungs were treating him. I wondered if he would hate me if I performed onstage like he warned me against. I wonder how he'd feel if he knew I was no longer Christian. I wondered how he'd feel if he knew I stopped painting, or how he'd feel if he saw my recent drawings. I wondered what he'd feel if he found out I'd turned out a lot like him. I wondered if he'd love me, or despise me. I wondered and I feared, and I thought of him constantly, and yet at the end of the day I'd tuck him at the back of my mind and wallow in unnecesary clutter because I was afraid he didn't care.

And now I'll never know.