The man on the subway

There was a man on the train today who caught her attention. He wore a plaid short-sleeve dressshirt and slacks, and was clasping onto a black suitcase. She watched him roll his suitcase carefully and balance himself against the subway pole. He was Asian, even from behind she could tell. There was a familiarity in his stiff gait, the way he stood, even the way he turned his head to look out the window.

The man resembled her father. There was the gray hair, which wasn't quite as gray as her father's, and the large obtrusive glasses. All of it was enough to evoke the memory of someone she hadn't seen in several months.

She thought of the last time she saw him. Not on a subway car, not rolling a suitcase, but in a large room with organ music in the background. He was wearing his glasses then, but his eyes were closed. The memory seemed unreal as if from a passage in a novel, or a scene in a movie. It was something she consciously hadn't thought of in a few months. But the man in the button-up shirt standing patiently by the subway door reminded her of what her father wasn't. And she became sad.