Essay: My Father’s Sweater

Lina Krishnan shares a moving essay on memories and the tender grief of missing a loved one.

I have just returned from a visit to my mother’s. While there, I found an old sweater belonging to my father, which I told her I would like, and brought it away with me. It is January, a little nippy in the mornings even in this tropical spot, and I thought a lightweight sweater with sleeves would be just right. And so, it is. It’s around six a.m. now, and I am wakeful as I have been over the past week. Anxiety over my mother’s increasing vulnerability makes me feel like Charlie Brown lying in bed with that checkered blanket over him, staring at the ceiling and his stomach knotted with worry. The sweater is a sort of comfort; it feels like I am in consultation with my late father about this person we both cared for and were exasperated by. Only he could fully understand a life lived in close proximity to obstinacy. 

I wish I could have found that unique Appa smell, but years after his passing, the scent of the detergent used in my mother’s machine has taken over. When my father died, his older sister advised my mother to give away all his clothes. “Seeing them will only add to your grief,” she said with all the authority of a long-standing widow. “I used to cry every time I opened your uncle’s cupboard,”she added.