Three years have come and gone and I still don't really know how to feel. I think about your face and thank the gods that I still remember it. The pulsing, zigzagged vein on your left forehead, how you joked you were Harry Potter. The shaggy white hairs of your eyebrows and how they made you look like you were constantly in deep thought. The slightly purplish lips that were so thin, the simple shadow of your salt-coloured beard would conceal them. Every crease along your forehead, cheeks, and neck. And most of all, your eyes. Those piercing blue eyes I always wish you gave me. Sheltered behind the shine of your glasses, they were pools of the most tropical water. Gemstones found in the depths of African mines. The kind of sky you only find in the countryside.
It has been three years but I still choose to remember. Not you in your glory days- I keep few memories of those suits and office chairs. I choose to remember your simpler times. Your jerseys and jeans. Your never-ending urge to fiddle. Your habit of taking things apart just to put them back again. Your silhouette in the living room whilst you watched football in the dark. It was hard to wake up in the mornings, thinking that you'd be downstairs to greet me as I fetched a midnight snack. It was like being hit by a bus, or being awakened by a violent shake. I still see the chair at the head of the dining table, empty, with no placemat or arrangement of cutlery before it. Now, the table is set for two, and lonelier than ever.
I didn't always choose to remember. At first, I was forced. I would lock your face in a box, and pray to god that nobody would ask me about you, but it was inevitable to see you everywhere. I saw you in every white man. Every golf store. Every telescope. Every football match. Every red polo with a white and blue collar. Every glass of beer. Every Chili's restaurant. Every news network. And every single object of the night sky- the planets, the moon, and most especially, the stars. How could I ever run away?
It's been three years and the biggest thing I've learned about grief is that it is not a slow-healing wound. It is a permanent one that comes and goes as it pleases. Some days, you don't cross my mind. And others, it feels just like day one, and I forget that you are even gone.
