I am not counting the days.But it doesn't take a calendar and a recent family album to know that my father's not here.That he's been gone for two years and he's not coming back.I think losing a loved one is like having the light switch of your favorite room go dead. You know every corner of the room. You can walk in with closed eyes and not bump into a chair. You know there's your soft Mexican blanket lying in the armchair to the left side of the room.Even in the dark, you know.But sometimes, just sometimes, having light makes it easy to see and walk in all of that beauty.The lights have been off for two years now but i know and i remember.I remember the blue colored box that contained all the chains and cuffs he ever put on.I remember how he would roll up all his pairs of socks and arrange them in the bedside cabinet like the window of a candy store.I remember those straightened shirts which hung in the wardrobe- I still want to believe that each shirt had a day tucked beneath the collar.Because on Mondays, you wore blue.I know because you were my favorite room.There are days when remembering breaks us down.They peel away the joy of the present and take us back-Like covered wounds and sad country songs.Like yesterday.Our second Christmas without him. We didn't say his name much. We ate rice and vegetables from flat plates and drank Coke from straws. Mom even turned up the radio because the music was good. We stood on chairs outside the house to put up the season's decor. They were red and blue and yellow.Mommy thought the colors were too much.I thought it didn't matter.It all didn't matter because he wasn't there to see or hear the music from the radio. Or sit next to me at the table and whisper how good the chicken tastes.But it's a day after Christmas and the sky is a little blue over here.It's a day after Christmas and there's fog over the mountain across the street and I can see the decor from this little window.Red and blue and yellow.It's been a day and I'm beginning to realize that I was wrong.It matters.It matters that there's still a crazy storm raging in our hearts but we've fought to keep our heads above the water.It matters that we are able to get out of bed every morning knowing that we wouldn't find you sitting in the hall reading.It matters that I stand in the rain at the bus stop for hours and not shed a tear because if you were here, you'd pick me up and bring me home.It matters too when I cry and the rains mix up with my tears and no one else sees.It matters, Daddy.And I wish you were here to see all the ways in which I've grown.I'm seeing now that there was light in you and there's light in me too.We may not shine in the same way but we are light nonetheless.So this is to turning on my switch.This is to filling my lung spaces with life wires and singing in the dark.This is to, most graciously, slow dancing to my own music and hoping with every watt in my tethered heart that you're dancing too.