Losing A Parent | For My Dad
September 02, 2019
Losing a parent or a loved one is the hardest thing you will ever have to go through. Losing a parent is the hardest thing I have ever gone through. Losing my dad.. well that was something I was not prepared for.
Saying those words even gets more and more surreal to me. It is something that I am having trouble wrapping my head around. It is not a concept that is easy or simple to understand or to accept.. there will never come a time where I sit and think to myself, "Jeeze.. I think I am over my dad's death. It happened and now time to move on." That is not how [my] life works and that is not how the grieving process works.
Mourning and grieving for a loss of a person is quite unique in every way shape or form. There is not one way to grieve and cope with the death of a loved one. You can cry in hysteria, you can stay completely silent, you can get upset, you can question every little thing, you can come up with multiple lists of regrets, you can try and distract yourselves by continuing living your life.. there are so many ways. For me, I am a bit of everything. I have my days where I instantly come crashing down with emotions and cry at the thought of my dad not being here anymore. I have days where I rather be silent and not talk or engage with anyone and want to be left alone with my thoughts and reflect. I have days where I get upset at others or at the world for not going as planned. I have days where I question if things were meant to be or if things could have changed or be prevented. I have days where I find regrets that were hidden underneath my pain and days where I decide I can't live in depression or sadness and should continue living my life the way I should. Not one day is the same as the others. That is what is so complicated and hard for me to figure out.. how to go about my life and navigate it.. it's all trial and error.
Sometimes when I pass the photo of my dad in the prayer room, I stop and pray at his photo. I typically don't pray and don't know who to pray to but in times of need, I pray to my dad and to a higher power, hoping that whatever energy I emit is being pulled away and listened to. I do say a Hindu chant at the ending of my prayer.. Om, Shanti, Shanti, Shanti, Hari Om, Sita Ram. I'd be lying if I said I knew what it meant. I always grew up saying it or hearing it and I thought it was a respectful and natural thing for me to say as well whilst praying. Whilst doing a simple Google search, the translation of such saying goes like this:
Om, Shanti, Shanti, Shanti.. means an invocation of peace. It is chanting the word shanti three times to represent peace in body, speech and mind.
Hari Om.. is a Sanskrit mantra, thought to erase all suffering. It allows the individual speaking it to remove their personal suffering and reconnect with the universal consciousness. Hari means "the remover", and refers to the one who removes troubles, blockages and pain.
Sita Ram.. refers to the Hindu goddess Sita and her husband, Ram. It is also used as a greeting upon meeting someone rather than saying "hello".
So whilst I pray to my dad during the morning or at night, I inadvertently pray/ask for peace for both myself and him in all its forms, as well as pray to erase all my suffering and pain that his death has caused me and to reconnect me with the divine consciousness that is the universe. And lastly, I close my prayer by respectfully greeting my dad because I am not saying goodbye, rather hello. Knowing all of this does bring me great comfort and guidance in knowing I am doing the best I can in respecting and honouring my dad.
It is hard. It is so very hard.. nothing and no one can prepare you for this. You can be a divine spiritualist, a pundit, a priest, a yogi.. but the human emotions and the emotional and physical attachment one has with a human being.. that is something beyond our comprehension. That is not to say that we cannot overcome grieve, sadness and pain.. we all do at some point or maybe not ever. But we cannot deny or avoid our innate feelings and emotions that we nurture over the months and years that we know a person. That is something far beyond us.
At 26 years of age, I would have never thought I'd lose a parent, my father. It doesn't make sense to me and it all seems so fast and so sudden. How can a person be there one day and the next, laying unconscious without being able to respond or feel or touch. It is just a body.. a vessel. You realize that the underlying attachment you had wasn't the body but rather the person and the soul that inhabited it. It is a very scary feeling coming to terms with that idea or concept, but it is the truth and nothing less. We cannot bring this body back to life, we cannot speak to them nor interact with them. It is rendered useless. But what we do have are the memories of the person, the soul. The relationship we had with that individual, the conversations, the shared activities, the in betweens of everything. That is all we have left of them. We cannot hold onto the physical entity of a person.. what is the purpose of a body without a mind. That is what we liked or disliked about them, that is what we knew.. the intellectual of the mind, the capacity to speak, think and understand. Without that, they are just a human body. We are attached to the superficial human body and associate our relationship with such. If we cannot interact or engage with them, then what are they to us? Certainly we assume they are nothing but that is wrong and incorrect. They were someone to us because we made it so. Of course the physical aspect of a person is very important and is what we depend on but we must learn to detach ourselves from that because as we all know.. we all have to go one day. We won't be here forever and we are all vessels. Fall in love with the soul, with the person and the identity. I am now learning to understand and accept this newfound knowledge, because it is the hardest thing to learn from this tragedy.
My dad taught me that if you are going to live your life, do it on your own terms. He taught me that nothing lasts forever and to cherish each and every moment you have with the people in your life. And trust me.. it is not easy. I am having a hard time being in the moment because I am too preoccupied with understanding and accepting his passing. To know that while he's gone, life continues and moves on. Such is life, right. I don't want his passing to turn me into something I am not. I want to be inspired, motivated, stronger and live everyday with him in mind. If he can't be here on Earth in his physical form, I want him to be here in spirit and in soul. And so shall he be..
I love you fada, I never told you that enough at all, but I do. You gave me life, alongside my mom and that, I will be forever thankful for. I am proud of you and hope wherever you are, you are in eternal peace.
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