The last time I saw my father, I was eight years old. He died a week before my 21st birthday. He died in his home country of Trinidad and Tobago, in the back of an ambulance, delirious from high blood sugar. He died having never known me. My hope to know him died, too.

It was July 19th, 2018, around 8 p.m. I had finished a grueling shift at the fast casual restaurant I worked for and was making my way home. My feet were throbbing with heat. My lower back was pinching, an unfortunate result of being bent over all day. Despite this, I power walked to the train station. Bitter piss fumes cemented in my nostrils as I boarded the train, vying desperately for a seat before anyone else. I envisioned the hot bath I would run when I got home. Bubbles, candles, maybe even a joint. As I reached my stop, I saw an incoming call from Salome, my father’s cousin.

Salome.

She never called. I knew in that moment my dad was dead.

“Lashanda, where are you right now?” I could hear her trembling through the phone. I told her I was almost home.

“Okay, well, please call me when you get home. I have some bad news, but I want you to be safe at home when you get it. Please call me back when you get home, please.” I assured her I would call back.

I dissociated the rest of the way home, stuck in this strange limbo of knowing but not accepting. I knew he was dead. I knew it. I couldn’t accept it.

When I arrived home, I told my mom Salome called and said there was bad news. She knew, too. All she could muster was a pathetic, “Well, that’s not good.” 

I called Salome back and she broke the news. My feeling became a reality: Peter Anil Mohammed, dead at 49. The energy in the house was tight and uncomfortable. No one really cried.

There was no doubt it hurt, but it was a detached kind of hurt. The person I was grieving, I didn’t actually know. Memories of my father only exist through photos and expositions from my mom. A glistening white rock stood square in his nose; it was actually an earring and not a proper nose piercing. He had a tight haircut, holding back his curls; it helped him pass as more black than Indian. The iconic Michael Jordan dunk pose was tattooed on his upper arm; a by-product of the late 90s, clearly without forethought. But these recollections are not mine. So, what was I grieving?

He was deported from Canada when I was eight years old, after overstaying a refugee visa. I only know these details now. At the time, he said he was leaving to “get his papers fixed.” Part of me applauds such a transparent lie, but those words would come to haunt me; they suggested a return. They suggested movement, growth, an end goal. They meant I could keep all his gifts and letters at a distance, because, well, he was coming back, right?

They say don’t take things for granted; I didn’t really understand that until my father died. I thought a future existed where we could meet, even get to know each other. I thought the passing of time would bring me closer to him. I thought I could wait, wait, wait, and a space would present itself to see my father. I felt entitled. I wanted to know him, so I should, but the waiting stole it from me.

It also created this sick type of grief I wouldn’t wish on anyone. Grieving something you were supposed to know, but you never knew is like being blind—you know there is a world beyond the nothingness, but it’s not yours to experience. The grief is arresting and isolating. But I did it to myself, by waiting around for a perfect time to reconnect. I abused the clock and it lashed me back.

It’s been seven years since. Another seven will pass. I will not feel lighter. I will not be healed. The clock will tick and I will not be healed. I cling to the hope that an afterlife exists and that my father will be in the same one as me. If he’s not, then maybe I will have finally learned my lesson about waiting. 

Lashanda Forsberg is currently a student of Professional Writing at Algonquin College, set to graduate in 2025. Nothing satisfies her more than a deep editing session and she hopes to enter the industry after graduating. In her spare time, you can find her penning poetry, curled up with a memoir, or swimming laps at the pool. Find her poetry on Instagram @writingsfromsaturn, and longer form writing at her website, lashandaforsberg.com.