IT HAS BEEN MORE THAN A YEAR since he has been gone and I haven’t been able to write a single word for the book I promised him. Sometimes I wake up from my slumber and feel like I accidentally woke up in the wrong universe, like this is the alternate route in the ‘choose your own adventure’ that I didn’t want but somehow ended up on. This is the alternate universe where I suddenly don’t have a dad anymore and where I float around wondering how I’m going to find him again because he must be in the real universe where we are all alive and things are as they should be. So then I lay in bed for days and weeks, waiting for time and space to meld altogether thinking that if I wait patiently long enough, I can get back into that right universe. But then months pass and I see that laying in bed is good for no one, so I try walking meditation to try to tap into a higher power. And before I know it, it’s been 14 months and that nagging feeling that I was in the wrong universe has been replaced with a fear that this is the real deal and I’ll lose him forever. And so this is where I am at now. I don’t want to lose him to fear. I want to celebrate him and reclaim his life. Through my drawings, photographs and writing, he will not be lost in this world. Wish me luck.

I love you, Ba.