He's not really in there

I watched the back of his head from across the street. Salt and pepper. I hadn’t seen his face in years, always just the back of his head.

I’d know it anywhere. It’s shape, the way he held it, the shoulders it sat on, the clothes he wore; today it happened to be the same jacket as that weekend away we had in Scotland. His hair was always the first thing I recognised. Like a flea bitten grey horse, except nothing like the way that sounds.

My brain immediately worked to refile that memory, dragging it forward to view like a folder from a filing cabinet, ready with a ping to be cross examined. That battered jacket was the catalyst, then came the sting in the air, the feeling that everything was wet, the vision of him smiling at the camera with no teeth.

We’d gone to visit just once, driving the entire way to Stirling in a day. He was born there when the castle was used as a local hospital, making it his divine pleasure to tell everyone that he’d been birthed next to royalty. It was a worthy brag to be fair to him, that not many people could match.

We walked around the castle battlements for some time. He refused to pay entry to the castle itself out of principle, citing that surely being born there made him a lifetime member, to which the teenage ticket girl rolled her eyes at. He spent the rest of the afternoon parading the grounds and pointing to the occasional window, suggesting that could have been the room where it all began, before buying us ice creams regardless of the fact it was February.

I had a photograph of that day on my office desk. In the moment, I couldn’t really tell if I was in the memory of the day or in the photograph of the memory. The two were so interwoven it was hard to tell where one started and the other ended. I didn’t even take this particular picture, I’m not sure who did. I couldn’t even remember if I was actually there in that specific moment overlooking the castle battlements, but now years later I clung onto it; a photographic remnant of someone else’s memory I’d ended up hijacking as my own.

The streets were people lined that morning, busy with regular commuters. My brain picking his head out of the crowd had given an unnecessary shot of dopamine making my hands immediately damp. I wasn’t sure why my body was congratulating me so much on finding him, but yet, this is where we were.

I let his speckled head go down the street, he hadn’t seen me and I wasn’t going to chase after him. In reality I didn’t really want to catch him, to know whatever truth he kept to himself. Seeing him once and awhile put me at ease, like there was some alternative universe out there where his laugh still existed.

Today wasn’t a seemingly unusual day in the grand scheme of things. The news was playing on the office foyer television as it always was. Japan intervened in their currency overnight so that happened to be the business headline, followed quickly by an opinion piece on why the Japanese weren’t having enough sex. I scanned my pass and looked over at the morning security guard who was busy scrolling through some trash newspaper online. A huge bunch of birthday flowers already sat on the reception desk, probably for one of the popular sales girls.

As the lift moved slowly through the floors I realised it had been his birthday a few weeks ago, I only remembered because his brother put something on his facebook page.

Heavenly birthday for my little brother David. Miss you loads moosh.

Moosh was new. I had to look it up to see if it was some kind of random dialect word I’d never heard before. I bit like lozzering, that was a new one I had to look up too, specifically from Stoke so hadn’t been deemed important enough to enter the English Dictionary yet. Bit like most people and most things from the midlands.

I always felt bad forgetting his birthday, especially considering I had it tattooed to a rib when I was 18. I had to do this very specific stretch to try and pinch the skin to get a look at the faded lines etching out 160957. I remember the day I got it. I proudly wore a borrowed silver crop top that night which I knew I could ruche up just a bit to reveal the tattoo in all its glory. I wasn’t sure why I wanted the bragging rights, something about proving you could withstand all the types of pain.

I’d been seeing him on a semi-regular basis for the last 14 years, my dad. The conscious part of me knew it was just a figment of my imagination, but a significant part of me believed he could still be alive. People fake their own death all the time, it wouldn’t be an inconceivable co-incidence that it’s what had happened here.

In reality, it was mum’s fault. When he died I was only a teenager. She’d done the only thing she thought humanly possible to console me during his funeral and had told me as we sat at the front of the church congregation, 'you know he’s not really in there don’t you?' She’d meant his soul had passed on and it was only his body there blah blah blah, not that my brain registered anything after hearing your dad isn’t really in there, therefore he must be alive.

I liked to imagine where would he be now if he was actually here. I always pictured him with Trudy, his long time receptionist. Although I hated the idea that he’d faked his own death to be with a receptionist, as cliched as that was, I liked the idea that he’d be happy. She was always so warm, I couldn’t really blame him. I imagined them on holiday, becoming bronzed on side by side sunbeds in some all-inclusive resort in Cyprus; he’d have liked that. I always seemed to see him on the move which I liked too. He was active, still living his life, enjoying whatever new reality he’d created for himself.

I sat at my office desk and thought about all the times I was sure I’d seen him but obviously hadn’t. I needed to let it go. Maybe it wasn’t me who needed to let go but actually it was him, maybe he had some unfinished business he needed to take care of hence why I always seemed to see him on the move, the most productive ghost known to the unliving world today.

Or maybe we needed to let each other go somehow. He was taken too soon. Stolen without permission, erased without any approval. We’d had time to come to terms with that fact it would potentially happen but it never made it any better when the time came. He’d been ripped from us. The parts of him that lived in me had been gutted and mangled and tortured out, forever to hold an open wound that would never heal.

I hated the fact I couldn’t remember the last time I told him I loved him; or even if I ever really did, it just wasn’t something we said. I wish I had.

I thought out loud so in whatever universe he was in, he might be able to hear. ‘I love you dad, someday the wound will heal for the both of us.’