My father’s last pair of glasses still has his fingerprint on one lens

Dear Delyara, I collected my father’s belongings from the care home today. Everything fitted into one supermarket bag: two cardigans, his electric razor, a half-used tube of toothpaste, one photograph of Mum, and his glasses. When I held the glasses toward the light, there was a fingerprint on the left lens. A proper oily thumbprint. My first instinct was to clean it because I spent years cleaning his glasses for him. Dad would take them off, hand them to me, and complain that the world had gone blurry again. I used the bottom of my shirt half the time, and he would tell me I was making them worse. Today, I took out the cloth, then stopped. That fingerprint may be the last place his skin touched something strongly enough to leave evidence. I brought the glasses home dirty. My wife asked whether I wanted to put them with his other things. I said no and placed them beside my keys, as if tomorrow morning Dad might appear and ask where I left them. His prescription is useless to anyone else. When I put them on, the room bends and blurs. I took them off quickly because for a second I realized these were the lenses through which he saw me during the last years of his life. I keep looking at that fingerprint and wondering how long an ordinary touch survives once the hand is gone.