My father passed away in 1998.
Back then, photographs were precious. Videos were even rarer.
Not every household owned a camcorder,
and life wasn’t documented frame by frame like it is today.
All we really had were photographs.
So I uploaded one of those old photos and watched it come to life using AI.
For a few seconds, I saw my father move again.
Not a real video, of course.
Just an AI interpretation of a single photograph.
But what actually caught me wasn’t the technology. It was what came after.
I realised that nearly three decades later, I don’t actually have many detailed memories of him anymore.
Maybe that’s what time does.
Or maybe it’s because I spent much of my teenage years away at boarding school.
Or maybe it’s simply because our relationship was more father-and-son rather than father-and-best-friend.
Whatever the reason, all that remains today are fragments:
A voice I may no longer clearly remember.
A laugh I can almost hear.
The occasional dad joke.
An authoritative presence that somehow managed to be both firm and yet kind.
The memory of a man who was respected wherever he went.
Perhaps that’s part of losing a parent.
Eventually, the details do begin to fade.
But in its place, you embrace the imprint they left behind instead:
The values.
The standards.
The lessons that become part of who you are.
So on this Father’s Day, I’m not just grateful for a piece of technology that gave me a fleeting glimpse of someone I thought I could only see in still photographs…
But also grateful for something even more important:-
That even when memories fade,
a father’s influence somehow doesn’t.
Happy Father's Day to all the dads out there.
And to those remembering fathers who are no longer with us…
May the fragments be enough to remind us how fortunate we were to have them.
The Accidental Adult (izwan.alias@yahoo.com) is a content creator under the Newswav Creator programme, where you get to express yourself, be a citizen journalist, and at the same time monetize your content & reach millions of users on Newswav. Log in to creator.newswav.com and become a Newswav Creator now!
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