Thursday, November 06, 2014

Remembering Dad ...

Once in a while, you become emotional, you feel like crying. Later on, you may think you were being irrational then. So what? It is better to cry, the psychology research has shown and we'd have cried even if that were not the case.

Today is such a day and now is such a time. I sob as I write this blog post. My dad passed away exactly 12 years ago. I was in the US and he was back in India. It was quite an unexpected heart attack. He was watching a cricket match in his usually excited self and then went upstairs for some chore and was not to return.

He was a straightforward man, a common man just like you and me. You are not fortunate or unfortunate to be a man's son. He is a part of yourself, your memories, your identity. The glory is not necessarily in anything particular you got (or did not get) from him, it is in the time you spent together. It becomes part of your past forever. The fact that you won't ever receive a visit, an email or a phone call from him makes that past precious. An unforgettable past may not be true in everyone's case, but perhaps it should be.

You become a better son when you become a dad. It certainly is true in my case. I am fortunate to realize this when my son and daughter remember their grandfather, the grandfather that they have never seen. Time and again I am reminded of this mystic quote:
Death is a part of life, not the end of it.