On Losing a Parent

Death, be not proud, though some have called thee
Mighty and dreadful, for thou are not so;
For those whom thou think'st thou dost overthrow
Die not, poor Death, nor yet canst thou kill me.....

One short sleep past, we wake eternally,
And death shall be no more; Death, thou shalt die.


Its hard to lose a parent to death, and its hard at any age. In fact its harder the older we are, for we have had spent more time with them, and, in having our own children have begun to understand and appreciate the hard work our parents have put in raising us.

When one is younger, a father and mother is a given constant, like the sun, the sky, the moon, the way things are and they way they ought to be, we rarely question the existence of our parents, no matter how much we philosophy and analyse other aspects of life and being of many things including the existence of God, we never, or at least I have never yet met anyone or read any work on why we have parents. We accept that fact as we accept our own existence.

How does, then, it feels to one day, at one particular hour, marked by the clock, we come to their non-being? I have lost both my parents, and I am no child myself, but, to me their loss is something I have never been able to make sense of. I feel slighted, insulted personally by nature, I feel ravished by circumstance, and I feel maligned by powers that be, for I have lost my parents.

I don't plan to list why we love our parents so, or why should we be doing them this service of remembering them fondly after they have gone. I, for one, am incapable of such formalities, such shallow niceties, such verbose and frivolous acts of pomp and show. I'd rather say how I feel it in my heart... that the day we lose a mother or a father, a very significant part of our soul, our connection to the universe, our bond to that something large and mightier than us all which we all refer to as God, our link to our own creation, our source to our own history, our life as we have known it and know it till their last breath, is completely shattered and changed.

I have not felt the same person since July 31st 2010, the day my father died, that day stands out in relief, chiselled in my memory, drawn on my mind, forever. As I write this I feel his presence near me, close to me because I simply refuse to accept that till death hasn't yet claimed me, how can an essential part of me die? Am I vain? Am I in denial? Am I perhaps mad? or all of the former, I seriously don't know, what I do know, what I do understand, what I do feel is this; I am breathing and living, I think, and go around doing all that I am supposed to do, but I am now not alone, there walks with me a spirit of a man that I loved, love and will love till the worlds of world fall apart, and then beyond that....