First second: Men running around, while shouting at each other, playing football in the sand.
Second instant: Dad pacing from one end to the other, within the hut.
Third second: Everyone has crowded papa, so much so that I could not see him.
Fourth second: Someone pushed me forward. I saw my aunt rubbing papa’s feet, he held my hand and tried hard, it showed, to smile.
First minute: Two of my uncles carry him to the car, while my aunt is starting the engine.
That’s what I remember when my papa, aged 39, all of a sudden fell sick while we were on a picnic. It was my aunt, Faiza’s birthday; who is the youngest of papa’s sisters. My father was rushed to the hospital from the hawk’s bay. My uncle’s speed must have been way over the limit as they managed to reach the hospital in seven minutes straight. This in itself is a miracle. When they went on their way, those left behind started looking for keys and started collecting things to leave. Then everyone realized that we did not have the keys to one of the cars.
To top all of this, another uncle of mine has a heart problem. He always carries the medicine that was needed now. Today, of all the days, he had some work and could not join us. That being the case, even the mobile signals were pathetic at the beach, so we did not get any updates on papa. When we came, we had three cars one of them had gone with the patient, while the other two were parked in the garage. The problem was that in the hurry to take my dad to the hospital, no one got his car keys out of his pocket. We tried every possible way but it was futile, so in the end fourteen people forced themselves into a Khyber. (This is a very small car, big enough for maximum five people.)
We went to our oldest Aunts house. (Before my readers get confused I would like to point out that my father has seven sisters. And most of them live abroad, but this time only one of them was in Dubai while the rest had come to visit. This picnic had been planned for them.) After reaching their house, everyone got cleaned up and were waiting anxiously for any news available. Even before I came out of the shower, this feeling of dread came over me, and I heard cries from the room. I came out and knew that he was no more. To top this, one of my cousins who has, God only knows what against me, came up to me and told me in cruel and plain words, “Your papa’s dead.”
I acted like I had not heard her, but I knew she was saying the truth. Faiza took me and my elder sister to another room where she thought she could break the news calmly to us, while trying her best to comfort us. But it was too great a pain to be soothed by words. Every one kept saying, time will heal and that times the only cure to get you all through this. My mother was thirty three years old when this calamity struck. I was ten years old, while my older sister was thirteen. My younger sister was five months old that time, so she has never seen my dad. Although, she has, but she will never remember him laughing like me and my older sister does. She will not remember him making jokes just to cheer us up whenever we were down. The stories he used to conjure up, whenever I used to say that I am too scared to sleep at night. Or else, the times when papa used to tease ma. Words cannot explain the huge loss that we went through. It would not be wrong if I said that we are still learning to get used to it.
I was always a rebellious being. People failed to understand me. I could relate to my father most of the time. I think he might have seen himself in me. He loved me for speaking my mind and never caring about what others might think. This was something that I guess he had not yet mastered. I never realized it, but after his death, I had gone into a shell. Like I guess most people do when they experience life changing circumstances and certainly counts as one. I had started spending a lot of time alone; right now I do not remember what I used to do all that time. My mother talked to my teacher about this, who then talked to me and gave me quite a lecture. She emphasized on the fact that I must not be scared to miss papa and it was alright if I never said all the things that I had wanted him to know. My teacher made me talk that day about my father’s death, the way he had died, something that I had never done before. At that time I thought she’s just making me cry harder, maybe it’s a new kind of therapy but I understood later how important it was to express all the emotions and the feelings that were deep down inside me. Feelings and emotions that I did not think I had.
It was so sudden, everything at that time, that now I cannot take anything for granted. Even though, at times I must be doing exactly that, but it has made me realize facts. The fact that we are given life, a good one, one in which we have the basic necessities and after that much more, all these blessing must never be taken for granted.
