My dad had a camera like this.
Brown leather case. Heavy. Old. I always thought it was ugly.
He took slides instead of photos.
You had to hold them up to the light to see anything.
That’s what my memories of him feel like now.

There, but only in a certain light.

I can’t remember his voice anymore.

He died at forty-eight. I was fifteen.

When I turned fifty, I started thinking about things nobody warns you about.
I didn’t realise back then, but now, I think a part of me has stayed there.
Not in a dramatic way, just in the background.
Life kept going, and I went with it, but something stalled.

I noticed when I was forty-eight that I was living years he never reached.

So fifty isn’t the point.
It’s just made me pay more attention.
I don’t want to drift through the years he didn’t get.

That’s it.
No lesson.
Just how it is.