Today would have been my Sensei’s birthday. If he weren’t dead, I could wish him happy birthday.
A year ago today, Facebook informed me it was my Sensei’s birthday. I told myself I should comment on his wall. Wish him a good celebration. Tell him it’s been too long since I’d seen him. Tell him I hope things are good.
Instead it slipped my mind before I did so.
Two days later I received a Facebook message that he had unexpectedly passed. I would never get to tell him happy birthday. He’ll never know he was in my thoughts. That he’s the only man who felt like a father figure to me outside my own dad — who hardly counts.
We were clearly and obviously very fond of each other. I know he held me in very high esteem. But I was always just another student in a sea of others he taught. And he’ll never know what he meant to me.
I cried when I found out. I was out at a club with my cousin, dancing in a crowded place. And I cried. If you’d told me I’d be found crying in public over someone I hadn’t seen in three years before that day, I’d have been skeptical.
I thought the feelings had past, for the most part at least. In the last year, the ache had lessened. I know very well I can’t live each day like I’m going to lose someone the next. I knows it does no good dwelling on the things we cannot change.
But I saw his picture today. It was captioned with words of warm grief. “Happy heavenly birthday.” I don’t believe in heaven.
It’s amazing how fast the grief can spring out of the ground, faster than any blooming flower. But like the cycles of growth and death and regrowth, the hole where my love of him nests has unfurled.
It will pass again. As it should. It’s hard to accept that I could think on him with no more tinge of hurt only a month ago and now I can’t. But it’s also easy. Because he deserves rememberance. And he deserves the feelings. And it’s comforting to know he’s still enough a part of me that I feel it.
We live on in those who remember us.
I miss you Sensei ❤
Thoughtfulfangirling 