The Day My Dad Died

Father died after the Winter Solstice.  But he died closer to the equator so maybe that’s irrelevant.  He died the day before what would have been my mother’s birthday.  That’s a little more relevant probably.

He told me a story before he left for his vacation in Bangladesh.  It would be the first time he would return to the country of his birth, the final resting place of his beloved.  That’s what she was to him, his beloved.  My father may not have started out as a romantic but my mother remade him that way.

Christmas 2016 would have been the first time my family (mother, father, brother, and I) would spend apart.  I just never imagined the full scope of that truth.  No one ever plans to go on vacation the way we did that Christmas.

 

The weekend before, I remember my father’s smile as he told me a story about my mother’s birthday some years past.  It’s a smile story.  Before he left the house that morning he told my mother to be ready; when he returned, they would go out to eat dinner for her birthday.  She was still working and on this particular day, she happened to be home.  She greeted him at the door of the porch.  Before he even had a chance to take off his shoes and enter the house, she told him to get ready.  Dinner was waiting.  He remembered the blue salwar she wore.  Then I showed him the picture in my phone.  I had forgotten the story behind the picture but now I
remembered.  It had been a very nice birthday.  There was five of us sitting at her table that night, celebrating with her. 

I don’t know if he ever had a chance to share that story with my brother.  It’s the story he told in the letter he wrote to my mother.  Then he went out to the market and died from a heart attack.  My father died. 

He just couldn’t live without her, his beloved.  So he went home just in time for her birthday.  He never did visit her grave after putting her there.  Instead, they laid his body beside her, on a shore distant from this one. 

Across the miles, two oceans away, something inside me died when I saw my father’s body, lying on a slab of steel.  He looked asleep, like I have seen him a thousand times.  They had dressed him in one of his suits.  The tie around his neck was one I had picked out from Macy’s.  According to Samsung Health app, I clocked over 18K steps.  The collar was unbuttoned.  He looked unkempt, my father, who was always impeccably, or as he used to say, “smartly” dressed. 

When I close my eyes, I see the look on his face in the semi darkness of early morning outside of JFK’s terminal.  He’s dressed for travel.  There is an excitement about him.  I feel a thrill of jealous impatience because my trip won’t start for another week.  I check my phone constantly to see where his flight is.  I got him an early Christmas present, an unlocked Galaxy S7.  I went to bed late and sure enough, he sent me a video chat from Dubai.  I video chatted with my niece and saw him as he finally cleared customs in Bangladesh the following morning.  On Monday he woke me up before my alarm clock, grinning ear to ear, introducing me to relatives I don’t remember. 

This should have been an image of his retirement.  I wasn’t ready for the call I got that Thursday.  I left the country with my tail between my legs, running as far as the plane, and train would let me.  I got as far as Paris.  It was my idea.  I should have at least had the chance to show it to him. 

Pain this great becomes a silent cry that often echoes in your head.  Or maybe that’s just me.  My father loved to write.  He wrote a lot.  But he was a practical man, his words, not mine.  I am a writer, an artist, so this is my father’s swan song, sung by me. 

My father is dead, my words have scattered his ashes oceans away.  My voice has been silent, now it must be broken.