I believe most of you would have heard about my father's passing.

Many thanks to all who came down over the past few days. Friends from youth, tertiary and adults. It felt like a personal reunion gathering. And thanks to zz and mau who helped inform and organize the coming downs.

Have been really busy over the past few days. Of waking up early and sleeping late. Pardon me if i hadn't replied your msgs. The days have been unimaginably long and dreadful--rituals were meaningless and sleep-inducing, and it's emotionally torturing the way you're expected to remain sad for seemingly forever. I want to move on already but tradition didn't allow me to.

The past few days were when i had spent the most amount of time with my family and relatives than all my life added together. It's like cny part two, only a sad version of it. We learned more about one another than we ever would. And i learned how lonely it would be to die without a family.

The amount of thoughts that ran through my mind over the past one week were so plentiful they could fill up a book. Possibly one like The Kite Runner which I have just done reading. And no, zz, it's not a picture book full of kites. Anyway, I have no idea where to start from and so i guess i'll skip the chunk of it.






You might not believe it but I don't have many memories of my father. Not many for me to look back and ponder over. What I remember is how he could clear his throat and spit a mouthful every time he exits from his car. That's how i'd know he's back. How, when i was really young, my father used to kiss me on my forehead before I sleep. I remember how stubby the hairs around his mouth felt. And that was about all the physical contact i ever got from him. We seldom talked. More so after our family got into a slump financially.

Yesterday I was talking to one of my cousins. She's a decade older than me, and have had a fun childhood--playing around with my other older cousins--something i have been deprived of. She have also seen grandmother, who had passed away when i was a year plus.

"Grandmother had always been worrying about (uncle Jimmy). He was very lazy, and grandmother worried if he could find a job, etc. Uncle Jack (my father), on the other hand, has always been working very hard all his life."

For the first time i realized how true that statement was.



Although my father didn't have an official religious belief, he has had many opportunities to know God. He was from a missionary school, attended church for a period of time, had relatives who tried to share the gospel to him before, and i had brought him to christmas service once or twice before on the basis that i was performing.

As he laid there in the hospital bed, i wonder if he prayed to God. The One he heard of decades ago in secondary school, and from the mouths of so many around him. I wonder if looming death made people more spiritual, in hope that they may live.





I havent been the best daughter to my father. But i know i have to learn to live with these regrets. His passing has brought our family closer together in an unwilling sense, and has burdened me with the task of sharing to my mother. Without my father around, my mother has grown emotionally reliant on me and my brother. I see where God is leading me towards, albeit my reluctance.

Taken from The Kite Runner (in Farsi):
Zendagi migzara, life goes on.

It has to, and it will.