Days with my father

I’ve been loving photoessays lately. I’d been seeking out many and I’d heard about Phillip Toledano’s Days With My Father several times, but I have to admit I put off seeing because I didn’t want to feel bad. I’m glad I finally did even though I’ve been sobbing for the past two hours since. It’s so beautiful and touching, you have to see it if you haven’t.

I wrote about my own father once. He died in 2007 and I didn’t get to say bye. He didn’t seem to love me very much, we only lived together till I was four years old and he never seemed to have much time for me in the years after although we developed a friendship when I was 19, a year before his passing. Still sometimes, I feel like I only know who he was through who I am. Last January, I visited his old house in Goa, India because his girlfriend I’d never even met was still renting it. She gave me some of his things – a pair of socks, healing crystals, a worn denim duffel bag that he carried all his Ayurvedic medicines in, a hammock, a year planner. I found this photo tucked into the leather cover of the year planner. It broke my heart into a thousand little pieces.