My Father's Music

As the family tries to come to grip with the sudden passing away of our rock, there are so many moments when his absence hits us like a cold hard block of concrete.

Like recently, when I had put on some music and a mouth organ started playing on the speaker system. The mind quickly went to evenings with my father, which usually involved Baba playing the mouth organ with his favorite child Joko joining him on every song. Sigh.

So as the music played, Joko, who like us, is trying to figure out my father's absence from our lives, rushed from the adjacent room to come and stand near the speaker. He slowly sat down. Joko then stared at the music system for what seemed like a lifetime. Then this beautiful thing, this dog child, this favorite boy of my father slowly twisted his head, like he does when he is thinking hard, and when the sheer complexity of life overwhelms him. Joko then closed his eyes. Like he had had enough. Like he was tired of thinking where his Baba went.

And then as the bit on the mouth organ trailed off, Joko sang for a few fleeting seconds. And I know, I just know, that as his voice took flight, it sailed into the heavens and reached where my dad would be sitting, a peg of Old Monk to his right, a mouth organ in his hand. Gray eyes looking down, half filled with light and half amused at Joko - a living thing made completely of heart, a living thing capable of howling so soulfully for the unknown.