Forgotten faces of my father

It's a thought that haunts me in the far recesses of my mind ... something that an episode of Hannah Montana last year brought to my conscious mind ...that of having forgotten details or at the time the sum total of the face of my father ... the memory of his smell or his touch ...

Chronologically his death was just a little over three decades ago ... thirty years is a long time by any stretch. And it's not like I woke up one day and all the details had been erased ... no, it was something more insidious than that ... a slow process where time eroded the sharpness and brightness of contours and details until but a blur remained ... a blur of a vague shape ... somewhat of the same size ... not a flesh and blood memory with skintone and five o'clock shadow and grey hairs ... no, something more like the chalk outline of CSIs and Law & Orders ...

Horror is an understatement to describe what rose bileous in my throat when I realized that I could not bring up the vision of my father's face ... the line of his jaw ... or the width of his shoulders. His image had fled leaving cliched memories in its place ... memories held together by the glue of words strung together ... no longer visual images ...

I pulled out every photo I still have ... and relief washed over me ... for the man captured in black and white and early Kodak colour was recognizable, my chromosones remembered him, if nothing else ... and as I flipped over photo after photo, the memories took on weight and colour and substance ... became real enough for me to step into and relive ...

I'd locked those memories away into the pages of photo albums where his likeness was also beginning to fade ... the colours more mottled and faded with the years. I vowed not to let as many years pass before visiting again ... I deliberately stroll down memory lane now ... never wanting that feeling to wash over me again, that of losing a loved one ... as in the face of my father forever ...

and maybe because I've chosen never to close that door again ... to carefully check every now and again that it is indeed ajar ... memories come to visit "out of the blue" when I least expect it. The smile of ice in an arena never fails to remind me of Dad ... as does the slicing of ice skates on Zamboni-ed ice ... a man's housecoat brings an automatic mental image of my father's blue and white checked bathrobe with him in it ... and when I'm really lucky, I'll catch a whiff of him in the air that I'm breathing ...