“Every soul shall have a taste of Death”, Al-Quran 3:185. Being a Muslim, that’s what we believe, we shall be returned back to ALLAH.
Sir through your paper I would like to share my and lots of other people’s feeling going through the same current situation on this Eid, that I’m facing a big loss in my life by losing my father due to TB. As on this Eid, I feel an extreme sense of loss and pain. The time settles each wound but it doesn’t rectify when they are of your own blood. Dear father, it is the first Eid I am celebrating without you.
The hours have turned into months, yet the shadows that you left behind are as dark as the pall of sadness that sloped a few months ago. Every curve in the house makes me feel your existence. It looks as if you are yet to wake up to have a date with death, that abode of sleep from where you woke up to sleep forever.
Life is going on, but your death is hard to believe. Your remembrances haunt me every moment. I remember you when people praise their parents and there is none to make noise about this empty vessel. Small stints at success, since you left, have gone unnoticed and unrecognized. There is nobody to pat my back. This recluse son of yours can’t narrate his marksmanship, for the audience is not as encouraging as you.
My acquaintances though remember you for your naivety. I can’t forget you for your shrewdness to foresee what those mindful people can’t see in this money-minded world. I curse myself for trying to tutor you to come to terms with this world where even sympathies are bargained. While you would greet every passerby from the maddening crowd as if you knew him for years, I feel bankrupt in paying respects to people in the same manner as I can’t match your benevolence.
Lost as I may seem to be in my routine work, I can’t forget what I owe you. I don’t care a fig if people fail to register the sense of deprivation in me, for I am possessive about my memories of the person who gave me all that I possess in life. I have a dream of making his dream come true. For that, I must keep going on, and this Eid, along with its rich memories, reinforces my resolve to bring that all for my family, which my father laboured all his life and ended up without seeing himself through. I believe therefore you are, somewhere around watching me, I want to have your blessings as my Eidi. Send them so that on this day I am not found short of all that matters for those who know what parting of their dear ones means. Dear father! Your loss! Oh! A big difference to me!
FAYYAZ ASHFAQ,
Karachi, June 3.