Dear Dad, you left me with more questions than answers.
I lost my Dad 6 days ago, last year.
“Hey Dad,” I called from within the house. “Am seated right here,” he replied in a rough, weary voice. I made my way out of the house to the front porch. He sat silently in his favourite chair, his worn body exhausted from playing with his grandsons. I sat silently beside him. His old wrinkled eyes stared innocently at the sunset. “We did it, son.” He softly proclaimed with a proud smile. “We did,” I mumbled as he nodded, still staring into the distance.
I have heard many people speak about the struggle of life and death. It is usually a conversation of an event expected to happen when we are elderly.
Perhaps because of this narrative, I imagined my father as retired and a proud man. At least, or maybe, it would be worth the sacrifices, sometimes almost literal, that he made for his family.
He wasn’t born into a life of comfort. Through blood and sweat, he hoped the land he ploughed would ensure a great future for his family first and himself last. The calluses of his palms and the scars on his body bore witness to his effort.
My imagination of my father as an exhausted old man and that he played with his grandchildren was probably my mind’s way of shielding me from the anxiety of questioning, “Will he ever get to enjoy the benefits of his decades’ worth of work?”
Odd and sad as it may seem, I imagined seeing my father on his deathbed. An old man with his large family and friends around him. Even many more people would fill his compound, for he had made thousands of friends in his lifetime. What would be the final words of a man who dedicated his life to his children? Would he be happy or sad? Would he be proud or ashamed?
The day remains vivid in my memory—Wednesday, December 7th. I had finished publishing a Medium article and was preparing for a Geophysics test. I sat in the university library, skimming through infinite pages and slides. My phone rang. My brother was calling. Knowing he called often, nothing felt odd, and I excused myself from the library.
Under a tree in the compound, I answered the phone. “Our father is gone.”
My body froze, all my muscles stiffened, and I could feel the earth tilt beneath my feet. Like a cornered deer, I stood in silence. I don’t know what my brother said next, but he hung up after a couple of seconds.
I felt lonely, betrayed, confused, surreal, and a mixture of every unpleasant emotion. I felt betrayed by all the people who associated death with old age. They led me down the path of believing that I still had time with my father. At only 58 years old, I thought I still had at least 20 more years with him.
I felt stupid that I had believed life would go in the direction I had thought. Life has always shown me that it doesn’t bend to my rules or thoughts. I surely did not learn the lesson. Cruel fate or whatever it is denied me the small comfort of a farewell.
I knew my father well, but in many ways, he was a complete enigma to me. Having known him for over two decades — my whole life, I came to small cumulative realisations that made my understanding of who he was even narrower.
When I was a teenager, like all teenagers, I grew distant from him and closer to my peers. After a long day of work, he silently sank into his favourite chair and watched TV, mostly alone, rarely speaking of his struggles I now know ran deep.
There’s a common cliche about how parents describe their hardships such as going to school. Most of us think they are just exaggerating circumstances. But, unlike many parents, he did not talk about his hardship when growing up. I only heard snippets from other people like my mom and relatives.
The few scraps of hardship I learned from his past were truly worth telling. The fact that I got to know them from other people made me respect him even more. From working manual jobs to support his siblings (my grandparents died when he was still young), to surviving in forests for days during a civil war in my country, I could see that his slightly wrinkled eyes had seen things that I could never imagine.
“What is your story?” I always thought, although, I never seemed to find the ‘right’ time — whatever that meant.
I sometimes sit with the what-if thoughts of spending more time with him, but I have had to swallow the bitter pill of the fact that that ship sailed away.
For most of my education, I was away from home. A simple back-of-the-envelope maths says I spent about 75% of my days in school. Of the moments we spent together, we were mostly working the land till sunset.
In my culture, people don’t explicitly express love for others. It is implied implicitly, especially among family members, through responsibility, duty, and acts of kindness. The closest we get is a thank you for a job well done.
I was always critical of my dad, the way he handled things, his approach to work, etc. I always thought there was a better way to do things and in many cases, rightly so. Having read more extensively than him — as he had ensured—I always knew of different opinions and approaches. But my mild intellectual superiority bias cast a shadow on many valuable lessons his old-school approaches brought.
My father always had a philosophy of grit but also savouring every good moment that comes. The hope that there’s a celebration at the destination of our journey is just an illusion. As a disciple of his philosophy, I believe it served him well. He sowed the seeds but never lived to enjoy the fruits of his harvest. The moments he savoured along the way made the journey worth it, or at least, that’s what I hope.
Most conversations about death are about farewells in hospital beds or homes. A few talk about cases where the loved ones don’t get a chance to even say goodbye. In just a single snap, one ceases to exist, as with my dad.
All the questions never asked, the answers never given, the promises unfulfilled, the moments unshared, the stories untold, and the advice never given all lie forever in vast emptiness, never to be.
Through the moments I shared with him, his voice still calls out to me, to sow the seeds of hope and happiness wherever I walk the earth.
I hope to be basking in the ambiance of happiness should death stop by. In the words of Maximus, quoting Aurelius, “Death smiles at us all, all a man can do is smile back.”
