When A Daughter Loses Her Father

It has been a year since my dad died. I am still baffled at the audacity of death, to come between a father and his child. It is an unkind separation. A tearing at the seams. Time became warped for me this past year, i am finding it hard to believe a year has gone by. The grief is still enormous and the sense of loss is ever constant. My concept of time became a measurement of time before or after my dad died. See, it is important for me to experience life deliberately since my father died. If the world had the intrepidity to keep spinning without my dad, then i must be bold enough to experience these days of loss with all my senses. I feel this grief, i touch it, taste it, smell it, wear it as a garment. When i was younger, I used to think, if i met my dad and he wasn’t my dad, i would probably still be friends with him. He was the coolest dad i knew. Nobody’s dad knew things like my dad. His head was a computer. The running joke amongst those of us constantly gripped with the pain of his demise is “Abba knows it all” because truly for most of my childhood, Abba did know it all. Abba was kind with his words and loyal to a fault. Everyone who knew him says “Your father was an absolute gentleman” and oh do i know that. On the morning of the first day since his death, i sat and watched people who didn’t even know his love like i did weep and cry. In one way or another, outside of the constant love and support he gave all his children and his wife equally, he also shared himself with friends and strangers. That was Abba. He had so much love to give. I was met with the realization that not only did i lose my father, i was amidst people who lost a brother, a friend, an uncle and even though these were all parts of himself that he gave away, he still had more to give. Their grief was just as profound as mine and i hurt for us all, all the sad souls who lost this constant light. Abba was boundless. Even when his pockets dried and life came on fast, his concerns were always for others. Never for himself. I weep at the thought of his last minutes on earth. Oh how i wish i could have carried all that pain. My sweet sweet father, who taught me that life was about the people we love. He never told me to be kind but i have seen him be kind so many times it would be a betrayal to turn out any other way. My father, my friend before i made my own friends. Every time i have doubted myself, i was always met with a father who believed i could lift mountains. He knew me more than i knew myself simply because i am just like him. Curious and stubborn. He would always figure me out and laugh because he knew he would have done the same thing in my shoes. If i am fierce and determined, it is because i was raised on courage. I wish we had more time Abba. I wish death had come a little later, when i am a little older (i am still just a daughter), when i have learned how to stand on my own. Allah knows best, as we people of faith say. So now, i am standing on your invisible shoulders Abba. Wherever i need to go, we go together. I hold my father’s memory close. I play it over and over and over again in my head. I play the part where we sat on a bench for hours under the sounds of Istanbul birds and you told me how it felt to hold your first daughter in your hands. Abba might have lacked words at times, but he never lacked emotion. You would see it too. How his eyes twinkled and his lips pulled in a one sided smile when he got excited and as a lifelong student that he was, it was an honor to see that spark so many times. As i hold these memories close, so also do i hold this grief close. It is this grief that keeps me up at night and it is this grief that puts me to bed. I am afraid for the day i would wake up and not feel this loss for it is that which reminds me that every soul shall have a taste of death and i am preparing my soul, oh Abba, so when we meet again in the gardens of the most high, i would be your daughter again.