by Hasan Goreja

Created on: September 30, 2008

It was 11th of February and the year was 2004, just days before the Valentines Day. The weather was really chilly and it was about quarter to nine in the morning. I just woke up in one of my cousin's house which was near the hospital, from where the dead body of my father was dispatched for burial. And I have no intentions of recapitulating or redrawing the wailing scene at the arrival of his corpse.

A good three months ago, he was diagnosed was Chronic Renal Failure. For a layman to understand this difficult medical terminology; his kidneys stopped working. Since then, he was surviving on dialysis. He was a patient of diabetes as well, so this factor accelerated his pace towards his passing away.

No one can ever feel the melancholy of a person having one, or for that matter, both parents passed away. The loss is irreparable, especially when you are the eldest of the siblings and even worse, when you are a male.

This world seems like a scary abbey with all the creatures haunting you and threatening your very existence. You have to look after your siblings and raise them as if they are your children. You have to comfort your mother and give her the protection she felt when her significant other was alive. The social responsibilities start burgeoning up and at the end of the day, you end up complaining God: "Why me?"

But as the time goes by, the wound seems to heal. You stumble, stagger, lurch, wobble but finally, you learn to live your life and deal with the demon which sadly makes the other side of the face of this world. The promptly you accept the reality, the better it is. As they say; "He is not coward who fell down but he is coward who fell down but couldn't stand up again".

So I stood up with my head filled with firmness, perseverance and determination. More so, my uncle, who was the elder brother of my father, died back in 1996. So I had seen his family drift from riches to a much lower stratum. I promised myself not to repeat the mistakes of the heirs of my uncle.

Regret is a natural phenomenon one feels after losing a dear one but living life with this regret and lamenting over past won't give anything except tears and sighs. No doubt the wound can never be healed completely but still one has to stop clamoring and must learn to take the life as it comes. Those who keep watching the way they've already come forth, usually miss the bus which came there to take them to their next destination.

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