Bedridden and in rest, I attempted to see the humour of his posture and reassure myself that his fatigue was nothing to be worried about. It was unlike him to stay in bed this long I thought, unable to detach myself from a creeping premonitory sense of his fragility and mortality. As much as I wished to erase such thoughts, I was cognisant of the circumstance and manner in which my mother had captured my disheveled state with a photo when I lay infirm days before my diagnosis with HIV.

I observed the way the soft light fell across his body and transported me back to that time in my life when I was oblivious to what ailed me. I wished the lens of optimism that mother had when she observed me was one which I could use to filter out the sense of loss I feared. 

My father would pass away suddenly and unexpectedly from aggressive brain cancer days after his diagnosis, days after this photo was taken.