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My father is gone!

August 11, 2012 signaled the end of life as I have known it for the past nine years.  I look at my parents’ picture and feel at peace that both are together in heaven smiling down at us. But then I wish I could grab them both out of the picture and pretend they’re still here.

I’ve been at peace with my mother’s loss for quite sometime. But the minute my father took his last breath, all the painful memories were awakened within a fraction of a second. I felt double the pain and double the agony. I felt my heart stopped beating and I wished God would take me with him. I was holding his hand, trying to keep it warm and whispered in his ears that it was ok to go, but deep inside I was aching for him to stay.  I was screaming inside.

I kept taking mental pictures of every second with him.  The last few hours are so clear in my head, every breath, every prayer and even every teardrop.

I thought the separation would be easier but it was much more painful than I have ever imagined. It felt like someone has taken my baby away from me! I swear for a moment I felt like a mother mourning the loss of her child. I could feel the pain in my heart like someone has just stabbed me.

I had been mourning my father for at least five years and I thought I’d cried all the tears but it turned out that I haven’t. 

I look around the house and take occasional glimpses of his empty bedroom and think ‘how on earth am I supposed to move on?’ Life can’t go on without him.  He can’t just be another portrait on the wall! But he is now and will always be.

It was less than a month ago when I sat at his bedside, held his hand and thought this moment will soon be a memory. I remember crying in silence because I was worried he’d sense my anxiety.  I don’t know how many times I kissed his hands and thanked him in my heart for being the best father anybody could ask for. 

Even throughout the hardest times of his illness, when roles were switched and he was the child, he still managed to express fatherly love.

I keep getting flashbacks of the times when he’d be looking at me with love in his eyes, and despite the fact that he’d forgotten all the words, he still remembered how to say “my love, my soul, my heart”!

Those are the moments that will forever be engraved in my memory.

I still don’t know how the new chapter of my life would look like.

But I do know that life without them will never be the same.