Today is your birthday and the thought of that just brought back all the pain that I have been trying to forget all these years. It’s been 17 years since you passed on but I still hurt like it happened yesterday or its because I’m a daughter, I’m not strong enough to move on or is it because you left the earth while I was still a baby. Eish Baba I deeply miss you, I would find myself daydreaming about the things we could have done together, the things you could have taught me.

My mother would tell me stories about you and I would find myself laughing and smiling at those stories because they were funny and seemed like there were happy moments for both of you. She told me that you were a bus driver. Whenever I take a bus to go somewhere I would daydream as I look at the bus driver and daydream about the fact that if you were still alive you would have taught me how to drive a bus. I would imagine myself sitting on top of your lap as you directed me in handling a bus and you would see the fear in me and hear you say, “Calm down ilula lento, wena nje yeka ukutatazela” and I would smile and ask to press the hooter and when I do that I will find myself smiling and laughing cuz of excitement. But then suddenly I stop daydreaming and then reality hits hard on me when I came to terms that you are no more and that opportunity was taken away from me, but today is your birthday.

Happy heavenly birthday my father, I miss you now and I will miss you forever. I have come to the conclusion that time doesn’t make you heal, but makes you learn how to continue moving forward with the wound that you have. I LOVE YOU Dad.