This Sunday morning, I was pleasantly surprised with a warm bear hug from my son (Kanishk, 10 years of age) wishing me a Happy Father's Day. Soon he locked himself in his room with paper, scissors, sketch-pens. I was pretending to be unaware of his secret plans & was entering in & out of his room. Each time, he would open up a book pretending to be reading, while shoving away his working materials to the corner of his study table. It is quite a fun playing along with my son's innocent act. Sometime later, while I was reading newspaper & sipping my weekend cup of tea, he slipped in greeting card from behind, saying Happy Father's Day!
His sweet act of planning a surprise for me on Father's Day, bought me so much joy. Instinctively I hugged him & told "On this father's day, I have mixed feeling of happiness & sadness". Perplexed he asked me why? to which I replied, "You wished me Happy Father's Day that's why I am feeling happy, but I feeling sad because I can't wish my father".
It's been nine months, since I lost my dad to cancer. With the passage of time, I thought I had come to terms with this irreversible loss, but these moments makes us confront the epiphanies of life. Loss of a parent, leaves a sense of emptiness forever in one's life, never to be refilled with the flow of days, weeks, months & years.
When my mind drifted into the labyrinth of my father's memories, I confronted several epiphanies of life:
In the cacophony of life's daily routine, we lose sight on the truth of impermanence. We fail to remain conscious in our daily act that the people whom we hold dear, may not be there with us tomorrow.
Life unfolds with fuzzy logic, randomness & unpredictably, only making sense in hindsight when we connect the dots. In contrary, we are all engaged in the endeavor of making our life predictable & we lament when it unfolds according to it's laws, ignoring our insecurities & fears.
Unknowingly we perceive time as limitless, in our daily living. A small act of expressing our gratitude, expressing our emotions & feelings, to our loved ones, gets postpone to tomorrow rather than today. Quite literally, sometimes, that tomorrow comes after the yesterday, when it's already too late.
Only if we can hold on to these epiphanies in every moment of our life, we can make our life truly enriching, meaningful & filled with containment.
I have learned so many life's lessons from my father when he was around. Even in his absence, he continues to teach me so much more. Today, I am a father myself, but my son made me reflect & introspect on life. As he grows, as a father I will also make my son reflect upon so many things about life. The father-son bonding is like a circle of life, which down from one generation to the next generation & next.... Happy Father's Day Pappa! Miss you.