Reflections

The mirror does not reflect my father’s features.

I cannot see his dark brown eyes, his rounded nose or fixed furrowed brow. I cannot hear his dulcet tone or gentle humming nor the scuffle of his shoes on wooden floors nor the dependable click of his pocket watch going… Tick. Tick. Tick.

I now keep time by the sun. I like its intrusive presence in my room, streaming through the windows with a warming kind of call to wake me in the morning. How it sets, colouring the walls in pinks and yellows. It moves and lights and darkens whilst ever present in a watchful manner as if to say, “it’s alright, you’ll see me tomorrow.” And whilst I wait, I sleep, because there’s nothing left to do without the sun.

My father liked to make the most of the day. He kept a journal of the weather and the sounds of the garden in the early morning, the flowers starting to grow and the bugs in the vegetable patch. He was a keen observer of people and their emotions, their habits and their homes. He travelled and he wrote pages and pages of lists and poems and notes and stories. I’ve looked, but I cannot find them now.

As I stare at myself in the mirror I notice small changes in my face. The right side seems slimmer having been flattened by sleeping on my side and my hair is starting to darken to a browner colour at the roots instead of the soft blonde that lit my father’s head. I missed out on his genes of warm brown eyes; his tall legs that seemed to make him rise above us all.

I fear that I am dimmed. My skin has become pale and my eyes bloodshot. I think I look mad until I brush my hair and then I think I simply look sad.

My father often talked about religion. He’d call us all for church on Sundays as his pocket watch ticked nine and we would sit on old wooden pews, and I would stare at the stone walls thinking about the books I could be reading and how dull the vicar’s voice was. But my father listened carefully to the sermons and after the service, would stand with the vicar discussing his thoughts about life and death, God and light. I think light was a kind of hope to him; he’d lived through dark times and lit candles to pray for better days ahead. It seemed to help him to believe that someone was watching over him.

I think we will see people in the afterlife as real. I think our bodies will be recreated in the same image we assumed on earth otherwise how will we recognise each other? I want to see everyone as I do now, my friends with their youthful faces and the same enthusiasm as at school; I want my grandfather caring and wise with age; I want everyone to stay the same reflected in whatever time I loved most. Then we can reunite and say, “Goodness how wonderful your smile is” and “I always love how you speak with your hands.” I will hug them all and cry and say, “I’m so glad to see you! I’m so glad to see you!”

We used to keep time to my father’s pocket watch. It counted every second going… Tick. Tick. Tick. It had a rhythm, it was a walking metronome; my father’s pocket watch was constant and fixed upon his body at all times. It would tick gently into the evening as the sun set lower, but you had no want to go to sleep if you could stay and sit and keep talking. We could pore over books or listen to my father recite poetry from when he was a boy, and he would laugh to himself when he forgot a word and remembered the pain of the schoolteacher’s hand upon his cheek, and then he would go quiet and stand and think and carry on again with just as much passion as before. He taught me a few, but I cannot remember them now, I only remember how he held his books in the centre of his hand, how he would pocket them inside his coat and pull them out at parties with a flourish that said, “let me entertain you.”

If I close my eyes tight, I can remember the musty smell of his treasure case, a worn brown leather bag that travelled with him across East Asia when he was just older than I am now. The crinkling map annotated with names of people met at stations and on hillsides, a pair of bird watching binoculars presented to him by his father, a small glass compass, a sharp feathered quill held with string around a bottle of dark blue ink. He was proud of these objects and showed them to me once a year on the anniversary of his return home from his travels. He said that one day he would pass them on to me and I would see the world for myself; he would point to tiny places labelled on the globe in his office and spin it slowly to show me the distance and direction I would go and I would think how lonely and sad it must be to travel to East Asia away from home and from family.

As I look now towards the window, the sun is setting and casting the room in a warm glow of orange light. I half expect to see my father walking across the garden with his notebook and watering can, saying goodnight to all his trees and plants, the birds and bugs, the sun itself and then to me. I almost felt him wave as the sun beamed its final warmth and then sunk beneath the horizon but now, I’m standing in darkness. I light a candle to better see my face in the mirror again and my eyes shine back at me with stronger colour than before. The warmth of the candle is strangely comforting, delaying the coming of the night.

The times I loved the most were the times spent with my father. Listening to his great stories spoken in his dulcet tone, the tunefulness of his gentle humming, the scuffle of his shoes on our wooden floors as he carried books to and fro. Now in the silence, more than ever, I miss the dependable click of his pocket watch going… Tick. Tick. Tick.