Resurrections

I have not seen my father in seven years. And yet I remember every feature, every crease on his face, every mole. I remember the timbre of his voice, slightly nasal, not unlike mine. This quiet week, my unconscious unearthed snippets of memories. A Sunday morning when I was very small, looking up at spiders on the wall. His fingers as they caressed piano keys and sang with me Beatles. My father praising his alien daughter, so wise for someone so young. How do the dead look when they’re up in heaven? Do they eat? Do they look as they did when they died? Gunshot wound, cancer-wracked, diseased? Do they wear clothes? I was ten or eleven. I didn’t know it then, but I know it now, that look on my father’s face. My father of humble truths sat in awe of a little being he helped create.

Where is my father now? Is he in heaven if there is such? He could not be in hell, could he? While wholly imperfect, my father was not a bad man. He lived. And in his quest to be happy, he lied. But little sins seem unimportant. Now all I want, all I have really, are memories of how my father was good.