Come On Dad!!!

Come On dad!!

Thousand times I tried to write on this topic, but every time I start thinking about it, I end up in wetting the page with tears instead of writing something. If you have your parents alive with you, then you are the luckiest person, and you wouldn’t understand why it is hard to write on this topic. If you are someone like me, and you don’t have your dad in this world, then you can understand why it is so challenging to write about your bad luck.

Parents are always loving and important to everyone, but losing a dad like mine is not easy. He was a great friend, a leader, a role model for many people including myself, an adviser, and a great person. I consider myself the luckiest person for being a son of such an awesome dad, but at the same time I think that I am the unluckiest person because I couldn’t see my dad for one last time when he was leaving this world and was meeting his everlasting life.

            I went to the United States as an exchange student for a whole year. Going to a foreign country in a full scholarship was really exciting not only for me but also for my whole family. I said goodbye to my family with smiling face, and I could see the sadness in the faces of my parents because they wouldn’t be able to see me for a whole year. I was just relaxed and excited to enjoy a full new life so I didn’t give any importance to the goodbye since I was meeting my family after only one year. My dad and I went to the other village to catch the land cruiser. I wish I knew that it was the last walk with my dad forever, not only for a year. My dad said goodbye with proud tears, but I was rushing to experience a year in different way and come back. I wish that I had known that that was the last chance for me to hug my dad, and I wouldn’t be able to see him again. The last words coming from my dad were not that important at that time, but I wish I had saved them somewhere. During my stay in America, I would receive calls from my dad. I had never seen him missing me that much. He would want to talk to me for hours and just listening to me, and I would try to avoid his questions so that I would have a good story to tell him when I get home. He asked me to take a lot of pictures so that he could see them. I wish I had told him everything on phone and wouldn’t have trusted this not trustable life.

            I was lost in the fun life of America, but in the last two months of my stay, I just wanted to return home, see my family, and live my real life. In the last month of my exchange year, I never got a phone call from my dad. The last time he had called me, he promised that he would talk to me after a week. Alas!! That week never came. My dad didn’t keep his promise. I kept waiting to hear my dad, but he never talked. Nobody told me what was happening, but the sixth sense inside me had told me what happened. I knew that my dad cannot be alive without talking to me for a whole month. I was so lost in the last month, and finally it was over. I was so darn ready to return home to see my dad, and tell him how worried I was when he didn’t call me. I was thinking to be angry with love. I was so eager to share my exchange year my dad, the only person who would be so excited to hear from me. I could hardly wait to reach home after the long travel of three days.

            Finally, I reached the main town of Chitral, where I was expecting my dad to come to welcome me. Instead of the smiling face of my dad, I saw many of my uncles and cousins with fake smiles on their faces. I was really worried at that point. I was wondering if my dad was sick or something. We went to my uncle's apartment in the town, and I saw some more people like my principal and some more relatives there. I just wanted to hear what had happened because I was so confused at that time. Thousands of thoughts start to revolve in my mind. Did something happen to my mom, whom I always worry about, or did something happen to any of my siblings or was it really my dad. At last, an uncle of mine was kind enough to tell me the black news which I was never ready to hear. It was something which was like an electric shock. When I heard that I had lost my dad; I felt the first feeling of an orphan. The room began to spin around me, and there was a lock on my mind. I was not able to think about anything. All I could see was the smiling face of my dad in front of me.

            Was this what I was expecting when I was going on my exchange experience? Whose fault was it? Is God that cruel that he never let me see my dad for one last time, and my dad died from a heart attack twenty days before I reached home? Which kind of heart attack can snatch my dad from me? Didn’t the death think about me that I was his son, and I was not home yet so death should wait for a while? How can my dad leave me that alone in this world? Is this what the world does to everyone or is it just me? Is it because I am unlucky? People say that it was a judgment, but first of all, how was I supposed to believe it? I am never going to accept it! This is not true…how can my dad die before hearing to all my stories and see all the pictures which I took just for him? How didn’t my dad think before dying that there is no one else who is there to listen to me and call me with sweet nick names? Am I not getting a kiss on my forehead after I finish my talk about my stay in USA? I accept that his life was that much, but is 17 an age for me to be called an orphan? Why do other people have their dads for 100 years? Is my dad never going to see me a grown up man? Is there no one to tell me how much I have changed, and how should I change more? Did my village lose a great leader? Who is going to do all the work he was doing for the power production project in the village? Who is going to support my family? Last of all, who am I going to call "dad", and who is calling me by my nickname "khan"?

            With all these questions, I had to go home and support my broken family. What such other questions were making my mom cry, who lost her life partner. I was supposed to support my family, and I was not supposed to cry! How was I supposed to control my tears when I lost a big part of myself? How much parents love their youngest kids is not hard to understand, and I was the unlucky youngest kid who would never ever get his dad's love. What was my dad thinking when he was leaving me? How did he feel when he saw everyone except me around him? I just paused my thoughts and feelings as I entered home. My only sister, brother and mom couldn’t hold their tears, but I did. I forced myself so much that my feelings died. Now I hardly know what it means to be sad or happy. People came to visit me. They took me to the back of my house where my dad was buried. The man whom I was expecting to hug me when I came home was so silent. He was so hidden from me. I could not touch him, see him or hear him. People were pointing to a small building as the permanent house of my dad now after. What can a son feel at that time? Who can understand me? My dad was not ever going to answer, no matter how loud I shout or how soft I talk to him.

            Now, when my brain started working partially properly after twenty days, I think that my dad was such a great person that this world didn’t deserve him. I had heard this Chitrali saying so many times but now I know what it means " Great people don’t live long". Hundreds of people came to my house every day for these last twenty days, and everyone was crying for my dad. I felt that it was not only my lose. That is the kind of death which I would wish for the person whom I loved so much. How wouldn’t a person like my dad go to heaven? As a Muslim, I accepted it as a judgment from God. I think that one day I will have to say goodbye to everyone else in the world, too. I was thinking that I wouldn’t be able to live one day without my dad. I was so mad at the singing birds that how can they sing without him, but his lose made me live and stick to life. It is the most unexpected thing ever happened in my life, and my wish of seeing my dad for one last time will remain a wish forever and ever and ever. If you have your dad alive with you, then please go hug him for me because you never know your last hug. I can write a whole book on this, but what else can I say now except that I will wait to meet my great friend, loving dad and brave leader in Heaven if I was able to carve my life in the way my dad had. Then we will live in a world where there is no America or Pakistan, and where there are no heart attacks. May his soul stay in peace. Ameen

            "Khuda janae yae dunya jalva gah hae naz hae kis ki

Hazaron uth gayae, ronaq magar baqi hae majlis ki"