Away forever

Today, I decided to do the so very horrible task of cleaning my wardrobe, what I wasn't ready to find, were items that belonged to my father. His favourite winter jacket and summer shirts, all tucked away in a corner of my messy wardrobe. I placed them there a few months after his death, I couldn't face them because I could still smell my father's perfume, after shave and shampoo all over his things. Feeling it, touching those items that he once wore, it made it all real and I wasn't ready to face it, after all, for me, he wasn't dead but away. Away forever.
It's still feels like he went on a very long journey, a journey that I hope was real...because then he would actually come back. It's like going to the cemetery to visit him, I always cry, together with the rain, the cold surface of the urn makes it so...real, so heart breaking. My father was everything to me, he was my best friend, my brother and my father, he took several roles trying to fill the emptiness that surrounded our family. My mother, wrapped in her addictions and problems, failed to notice what her absence made me feel like, so my father took on that role as well.
I miss the times when I'd go with him to work, helping him with the little I could so he could bring a little extra money home. He was a photographer at the hospital, spent his life photographing dead people. It made him sad and depressed, one of his biggest fears being death it self, a fear I inherited and that consumes me, little by little. 
I miss it so much, when he would show up at school to pick me up, and we would turn on the music as loud as our ears could take, filling the emptiness of another day, the prospect of coming home and not finding a warm welcome, letting go of our fears, and masking them, tucking them inside for no one to see. I miss the patience he had to blow dry my hair every night, making sure it was properly dry so I wouldn't catch a cold. I miss when he would watch TV on my bedroom and wait till I was asleep so I wouldn't be afraid of the dark. I miss his presence, I miss his smile, I miss his voice and our senseless fights. I miss everything. I miss my father.
He was, is the best man I ever knew.
It's strange, not waking up to a pillow being smashed to my face because he knew that was the only way to wake me up, weird not having someone bake those delicious cakes from time to time, weird that I can no longer feel his perfume, or after shave, or shampoo...in any of his clothes.
Father, I love you, and if I can raise my kids half as well as you raised me, then I'm sure they'll be as happy as can be.