A photo of my father in a frame on my desk–I miss him. I see him clearly when I focus–I do not have to close my eyes to see him. I do not though see him as I do a person sitting on my couch, but I see him as he had sat on my couch, talking as he talked, gesturing as he gestured whenever he talked as he would. There really isn’t a day that goes by when I do not think of him. Or so I say because I imagine I must think that I need to believe that I believe so . . . and so I do.
I am not always at my desk, not every day. But there are so many things I do that I would have done with him, both myself as an adult and recollections of myself as a child. But then I have said before that a lot of memory is fiction, what I make out of fragments in memory, what you do, what then must I say? I miss him.
I do talk to the photo of him as I do talk to him, and yes, sometimes I am able to have conversations as we had; not recollected conversations, but new and present conversations. How are the dead not alive in the mind?
The Falling Leaf Review 