You see his reflection instead of your own.
Except you're wearing a black tie today and he'd never use such a thing. He'd rather go with red, or even a nice, dark blue. But you're wearing black. Because you are you and not him.
You are alive and he is not.
Sometimes it takes you two hours to get dressed. Not because it should actually take that long, but because you stare in the mirror for so long. Just starring. Standing there, scanning every miniscule feature that you've gone over more than a thousand and one times.
It's hard to make yourself move when that happens. Shirt half way buttoned, no shoes, jacket lying somewhere to the side.
It's the most casual no one's ever seen you.
Your old man had a kindness to him that was equally contagious as it was annoying. You remember him smiling constantly, even when the situation called for sadness. The only time you ever saw him upset was when you yelled at him that night. It's perfectly ingrained into your memory, slowly but surely sucking what little remaining life you have.
It was the last time you saw him alive.
Mother gets out the photographs sometimes. She comments on how much you're starting to look like him. It's the eyes, she says. Dark brown, calculating, but strangely open. Always the eyes.
You want to rip them out.
Take them into your hands and squeeze until there is nothing but traces left. Just memories that shouldn't be able to haunt you like a real person but they do. It's suffocating, and you sometimes forget to breath. His face is always there, always around. But you can't see his eyes anymore and for a moment you wonder if you've taken his instead of your own. You don't get up on those days.
Contrary to popular belief, you are not your farther.
You do not have his lack of patience. You do not have his childish imagination yet maturity when it comes to personally harmful situations. You do not sit by the fireplace late at night and read old novels that you really don't understand but keep reading anyway. You do not cry at movies or laugh the hardest when you are the butt of the joke. You do not kiss your baby boy goodnight and sing that ridiculous lullaby until he is a teenager and is suddenly 'too cool' for such things. You do not have a wife or children that you unintentionally left behind because a bullet decided it wanted to live in your heart. You do not say you're sorry when you have absolutely nothing to be sorry for.
But still, you see his reflection instead of your own.
Until the mirror breaks again.