Letter to dad

Two more days (according to the lunar calendar), and it is the anniversary of dad's passing. I started my tradition of writing to him tonight, this one the fourth letter I will be writing.

I started late this year, because of all that has been going on over the past three weeks. And only late at night do I have the time and peace and quiet to sit down and write. Here I am, typing away at one in the morning, with dad's smiling portrait on the wall next to me, the sound of brother snoring a few steps away, and the sound of my nephew occasionally stirring and crying suddenly in his sleep.

What do I write? Where do I begin?

There is so much to say, so much to recount... The completion of my thesis, and my degree, which I began just months after dad left this world... My progress in establishing myself in Canada... Mum's condition, which has steadily deteriorated, and is still very much very fragile and worrying, and the new treatment now just days away... My first real relationship, how happy and blessed I felt just a year ago, and how shortlived that all was, and how deeply hurt I still am from the long drawn-out breakup... What else is there to write about? My hopes, my dreams, my longings, my fears... My creeping sense  of loneliness, my feelings of helplessness, the feelings of being abandoned and alone to fend against mounting difficulties, my desires, my fantasies, and my frustrations...

Dad, hear my prayers... You see and know what I have done and gone through this past year...

Dad, I do hope you still are, and will be, proud of me.