Appachchi

There were two men that lived at my house when my father was around:" one was Tissa Abeysekara and the other was Appachi himself.

In saying they were two different people, what I intend to say is that he never let his private life get in the way of his work, and had a strict line drawn between the two, and to me not only having lived in the same house as this great man but to have been his only son has been a privilege and although he was always busy he would make time if Akki or I needed to talk to him.

Tissa Abeysekara

If someone was to recall the great man my father was, it wouldn't be too hard, but if they were to recall the great father he was, it would be. So let me in a few words tell those of you who knew him as Tissa Abeysekara, how I knew him as a father.

As most boys my age would, I get into trouble; at school, at home and everywhere in between, and every time my parents found out what mischief their little son had been up to, I was first lectured by mother who would inquire, "why puthey", "be careful puthey", "I am very sad at the fact that you did this puthey", and then I am summoned by the Big Man upstairs. Him being the disciplinarian in the family I should expect nothing but a cold handed slap across my cheek, but never would he do that.

He would never punish or scold me for doing something wrong, but he'd casually ask me what I had done, and then tell me a jolly good old story of him in his youth doing something that could top my crime.

One of the earliest memories I recall is my middle school headmistress telling my mother at one of their weekly reunions that her son "is running amok at school" and then as always my mother, miserable at the news ended up telling my father, who called me up and said "Putha, I have done worse, but I was smart enough never to get caught".

From my grandfather to my father and from my father to me, great stories have been passed down and out of many a few he never told me and when I asked he would say "if I tell you these things your mother would be at my neck".

Many people would miss my father's lectures and his talks and speeches.

To me it's not merely those that I will miss. I would miss the long chats we would have during power cuts, about my grandfather, about my grandmother, about cars, and every so often amongst just the two of us, friendly debates on politics and global views and implementations of amendments and other topics that would bore my mother and sister.

I would miss being in the garden and hearing him hum golden age tunes, I would miss him yelling at the top of his voice at Akki and me for coming home late, I would miss seeing him on his rocking chair having a night cap, I would miss travelling with him and I would miss hearing his voice calling down the stairs, "Putha can you come up... something is wrong with my computer".

And above all I would miss my teacher, my mentor, my friend, my father, and let me end by saying, until it is God's will to let us meet again, I can only meet him in my dreams, and boy, I can't wait to go to sleep now.

Tissa Abeysekara was a great man, perhaps one of the greatest this country has seen in many ways than one, but let me end by saying that he was a greater father, and as all Christians should let us not moan his death but rejoice and celebrate his life and this, his unity with God. To this world, he is no more but his legacy and his name will live on in all of us.

Dimitra Abeysekara

With love... Appachchi....

Yesterday I touched your shirt.
Tried to smell you in it.
To feel the warmth of you.
Hear your deep, russet voice. If a voice had a colour,
Yours would be chocolate.

I'm at the cusp of your life and death.
Balancing on the tip,
Afraid to fall off
The jump is deep.
The landing...uncertain.

Here... at this cusp, at this meeting place
Of two worlds
I'll be.
With you.
Where I can still see you, smell you, feel you.
Hear the chocolate of your voice.

Yesterday, while at this cusp,
Holding on to the memory of your shirt,
The memory of you,
The memory of our hands intertwined,
My palm hidden in the envelope of your fingers,
I felt you tug.

And I knew.

I knew, that to love somebody
Meant not only to fall from the cusp of a moon
But to jump.
Jump and know that in falling all is not lost.
So I jumped,
With you.
Hand in hand we leapt
From the precipice of your life into the alleys of memory.
Where you reside now in my world.

The void of your absence
Is filled with the moon bathed memory of your life
You are not gone to me
Not until I stop loving you
Not until I let you go....
Let you go into that night
Where things forgotten tread upon the silence of
the still canopies
Of the dark.

I won't let you go.
Thus in my memory, in that part of me that is "you",
Where 'you' dwell, I will keep you.
To me you "are".
You go on.

And at the edge of the day,
In a nook of the sky, where sea meets heaven.
The crescent moon shines,
At the cusp of which a memory stands,
A memory jumps,
And like sea gulls we soar.
You in my hand
And I in yours

In memory of my beloved Appachchi whom I love more than anyone else I have lost in my life.
I love you Appachchi.
May God bless you and keep you until we meet again.