My father was never the type of man who’d say “I love you” the way other parents do, but he was certainly the type of man who was always present and showed his devotion through everything he did for me and my brother, especially after our mother left when we were both still very young.
When I think about it, he was someone who treated everything, including his feelings, the exact same way he treated his job of a civil engineer. He kept things strict and only said things when it was really necessary, but just like the bridges he constructed, everything he ever did carried the weight.
I recall that he never missed any of my school recitals or any of my brother’s games, even when his team was so weak that they were losing every game.
My father was the person who raised us, and who was always there, until he wasn’t.
You see, he got diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in May and lost the battle with the devastating illness in October of the same year.
On the day of his funeral, my brother appeared wearing a bright red suit. I kept staring at him for a while, and it wasn’t just me, but everyone who attended it.
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Thing is that Eric was a spitting image of our father. He carried the same dignity, the same stubbornness, and the same inability to express or deal with his emotions.
Some five years before our father’s passing, Eric went through a rough divorce and he and dad had a massive fall out. It wasn’t like their relationship got rocky to the point they hadn’t talked to one another. They still talked on the phone and spent Christmases and other holidays together, but you could feel things weren’t exactly the same. They were cold to one another, and I hated that.
When Eric sat next to me, I asked him, “What is this? Did you have to choose red? Dad would have hated it.”
“No, he wouldn’t,” Eric said. This suit is his, I found it in dad’s closet.
“No, you didn’t,” I said. “I went through dad’s closet just last night, and I didn’t see a suit like this. I’ve never seen a suit like this.”
But then Eric said he found it in dad’s hidden closet behind a concealed wall compartment. There were three suits, two black ones, and the one he had on.
