Issue No. 20: Losing My Father And Everything That Happened After
A story of grief, loss, betrayal and love
I last saw my Abbu (father) when I was 23. Now I’m 41. It’s been 18 long years of seeing him only in old photos and memories.
I remember jumping out of the car and racing into my house that day, wading through a sea of blurry faces. I didn’t know which room I was supposed to go to, I didn’t know where he was. I entered our home and had one foot on the stairs, confused and awkward, when I saw one of my sisters come out of the drawing room on one side.
“He’s here”, she said.
A few hours ago, I had been standing at my work desk, hundreds of kilometres away in another city, talking to a colleague about what felt like a very important presentation for me at the time.
It’s unreal how your entire life can do a complete 180 on its axis in a matter of moments. My phone had buzzed next to my computer, my sister’s name flashing across the screen, and I’d answered unaware that that call would steal the air from my lungs and completely stop time.
My dearest, dearest Abbu had passed.
Within a span of three hours, I’d left so many things behind like they had never mattered, packed a few things, taken a flight and was now walking into a room to see my father for the very last time.
I spent that afternoon next to Abbu. He looked at peace, like he was just sleeping, and I could just reach over and gently nudge him out of a nap.
That evening he was laid to rest.
It was the longest, hardest, worst day of my life.
My Abbu was my whole heart.
And I was his, right from the start. Despite being the awkwardly placed third child out of four, a girl yet again when everyone was expecting a boy, he always made me feel that I was never less than anyone. He loved me with every cell in his body and there was no dream I could dream that did not also become his.
He thought the poems and stories I used to write in my childhood were masterpieces, laminated and stored away like works of art in a file. He’d make me coffee every morning, in that one mug I was insistent on using. No ifs, no buts, no “it’s not washed, just have it in this other one”. He wrote me emails, when I moved out of the city to live by myself, seemingly filled with everyday updates, but also life lessons and gentle advice layered between the lines. When I bought him a gift with my very first paycheque, it looked like I’d gotten him the most precious thing in his life.
As a shy, introverted child, many people judged me, criticized me, but never Abbu. He saw me for who I was; there was never any confusion, no misunderstanding. He thought my quirks were my superpowers.
To be seen with such clarity and care, like the sun sees the flower, like the ocean knows the pull of the moon, it was and is one of the greatest love stories of my life.
Until his very last breath, there was a worn-out, fading note, flailingly stuck to the inside of his closet door, that I had made for him as a child. He loved like he knew nothing else.
For years, I wouldn’t be able to answer if anyone asked about him.
“My father’s passed away”, I’d awkwardly stumble over the words, wishing for some interruption to swallow up that conversation. It’s like you get suspended between two realities where you know he’s not there, but you really don’t want to say it out loud.
Grieving Abbu over these eighteen years has taken me through an entire landscape of longing and love.