I WISH I HUGGED HIM - Remembering Dad

- [My father died in an accident last year. I could not do anything for him, so the least I can do is dedicate my sites to him. Click here to know who took this photo and How he died.]

-- An ode to a Father

He laid on his back with his eyes closed, eyelids swollen and stuck with dried tears shining within. His face looked so peaceful and yet so sad, as if he was thinking of his loved ones whom he loved so much. His head looked normal but for the slight swelling on one side with some signs of red …… and God knows what within. Tubes came out of his wrists on the right, tubes came out of the left; tubes came out of his nostrils to feed him and out of his stomach to drain him. But for the tiny wavy blips on the solemn screens of the gadgets above him and the rise and fall of his chest, old with age, there was nothing to tell me if he was sleeping or…..

The bright plastic tube inside his mouth jostled side by side with another, the oxygen pouring in & out to make him breathe -- that horrible thing which we know as the ventrilator was some good scientist’s gift to people who had stopped breathing, his gift to his near ones who could just wait and hope, hope that the eyes would open, for without it the lung could not breathe for the man had stopped breathing long ago & his heart was beating but barely so.

The sanitised surroundings camouflaged the pain and one would feel here was my father resting away from the heat and dust, here was my father at last getting what he deserved -- Rest from his worries about his loved ones, about his son, about his granddaughter, about his daughter-in-law. The air-conditioned coolness lent a false sense of lull in the mind, it made one feel that here was he resting and will wake up healthy again. His face and arms looked so fair, was it his fairness or was it that the blood had receded from his veins? Science would say the latter because he was not so fair.

The tears had dried… did they come when he saw in a flash that death was near, out of sadness that he would not be there to see his granddaughter graduate, to bring the groom home, to play with the tiny guest who would one day adorn the house and keep his name?

I touched his forehead, I touched his arms and I brushed his hair apart. I talked to him and said “Don’t worry everything would be fine” but knew I was lying. I looked at his swelling on the head, remembering the CT-Scan that the doctor had shown me just a while ago, the blood was all over. So much blood? Where was it so long when he was well and living? Barely 10% chance they said to me, I knew they were lying too- the ventrilator told me so. The brain that was so active was no more. Only the heart beat on relentlessly, much filled with love it was so, just as a father knows how to love, with his heart full of a lovely glow.

I wished to wipe his tears from between his closed eyes; I wished to tell him I have changed to what he had always wanted. I wished to hug him tight. I wished I had hugged him long ago.

I wished to do so many things for him, to tell so many things to him, to do so many things for him that I never did and now it was too late for him and me. I wish I had not fought with him on so many issues, Inside my heart I knew he always loved me and cared for me and took care of me when I was small, when I could not walk, when I could only wet the bed. He guided me when I did not know how to tackle the world. He held my hand when I felt nervous. He was the first one to feel glad when I passed school, when I graduated, when I got my first job. I never understood his joy till I became a father myself. Inside my heart I knew he was & would be always there when I needed him, silently toiling hard to make my life better so that I too could become a father one day. He never demanded love from me, never demanded care. Fathers never do, for they do their bits out of love and love is always one way -- descending. I loved him too. But never did I find time to tell him so, never did I hug him tight, always keeping it till later.

Who would have known that one day so suddenly a freak happening would take away my support and I would never be able to ask him for advice and mental guidance? Who knew that God would never give me the chance to hug him? I wish I had hugged him and told him “I love you”. All I could do is wipe his forehead but he did not know, his eyes tightly close so, and all I could do is to touch his feet to say Goodbye —and ask him to forgive me; Forgive me DAD for not hugging you earlier and telling you I love you, when it mattered and now it did not anymore.

Dust-to-Dust – that is the story of man. He comes to this world crying and the rest laughing and he goes making others cry. Dust to Dust- into the raging FIRE, into which with these hands of mine I pushed him away forever from myself, wishing I had hugged him when I still had the time- but time is what we never have.