First Letter to My Papa

Took me 20 years for the pain of grief to diminish

Since it’s the end of the year I’ve been in a reflective mood and wanted to reprint a letter I wrote to my father on my WordPress blog on 7 July 2022. I wrote a few and this is the first one.

Papa, the last time I communicated with you was through text. And back then texting was very expensive and I found out you spent S$92 on texts from overseas. Don’t know if it’s accurate, but somehow that number is stuck in my head. All I know is that it was extremely expensive for a couple of texts, and it made me feel like it was important for you to reach me. I was touched and comforted that you, who were always so prudent with money, would do that. Right now, that money means nothing and the connection, everything.

And you were prudent with yourself, but never with us. And to think, before this, you never texted. My deepest regret is not taking a picture of those texts on my old Nokia. They are all lost now. But maybe then it was too painful and traumatic to keep that record.

I think I wanted to forget that time and just remember the precious moments before. When we used to sit together in the hall on our recliners, side by side, reading. You said it was to save on air-conditioning to be together, rather than in two separate rooms, but I knew you wanted to be with me. Because in the end, neither of us read. We talked. Mostly initiated by you. The best distraction ever and I’m so grateful we had that time at least. If we hadn’t, I think I would be completely destroyed.

Why wasn’t I mature enough to respond more, to listen more attentively, be less flippant, to ask questions. Now I have a million unanswered. Oh, how I have kicked myself since. How I’ll never forgive myself.

And I miss you so much, Papa. I know if social media was around then, you would have your own blog, just like me, and we would be each other’s biggest fans.

You were always the best at everything to me. You were always better than me in every way. I just never told you.

It’s been almost 19 years and I’m finally ready. Something I’ve wanted to do for a long time. Please Universe, let this reach you. I don’t know any other way.

Follow up letter now.

30 December 2023

My Papa,

I am still unable to write about the day you died. That caused me PTSD and to write is to uncover deeply buried trauma.

One day I will.

Perhaps I feel that once I write it I’m letting go of you and I never want you. Strangely, the pain is keeping me tethered to you. To let go of it feels like a kind of betrayal.

Just like David Gates wrote in his stunningky beautiful song to his father.

These lines just break me. In the year I lost you, sobbing to this song alone in my room was a release I needed. Grief therapy would have been better but I didn’t know I needed that level of help then.

But part of me knows that nothing would have helped apart from reversing time and rescuing you somehow. Irrational, but the way I felt.

As you worried, perhaps I do have your mother’s genes. The clinical depression ones. I know I have your anxiety for sure.

The finest years I ever knew

Were all the years I had with you

The part of me that can’t let go

I would give everything I own

Just to have you back again

The pain has diminished, but the yearning to hold your hand, hear your voice and have you with me, never will.

I only want to write what is in my heart and I thank you my dear friends for always lending me a listening ear. It has been so healing. I can’t even begin to tell you how much.

Especially when you share your own stories of grief. I feel a connection with you and yearn to lessen your pain.

🌹

Shanti