What a Different life it would hav been!!!!

The memories are slowly fading away. It was public holiday 2nd October Gandhi Jayanti, how can I forget that day. Vaguely remember when the phone rang, my grand-mother picked it up and started screaming hysterically. Earlier that morning my uncle and other family members told me that the operation was successful and I could visit him that same night. I had so many things to talk, but…

He was Forty-three years and I was eighteen that time. He was my father, friend everything. If not for the negligence of a doctor, he would have been forty-seven years now. I was too shocked to react when he died. I remember my mother & sister holding each other and crying .I did not look at the time and never asked anybody, but may be 8:30pm or 9:00pm(Or may be later). Most of the relatives/friends were there. Nobody could console my mother. I did not even try .I remember staring at his dead-body and hoping he will start breathing. I did not cry when they took him away to perform the last rites. I myself perform the last religious rituals of my father.I remember sitting at the door step and hoping that folks will come back and say "he is alive, he suddenly got up". Nothing like that happened and I quietly went and sat near my mother. Don't remember when I slept (and how could I sleep ?) .I would run to open the door whenever I hear somebody knocking the door ,hoping he would be there .This continued for two days until I realized he was actually gone and would never come back .

My mother sent me to hostel so that it would be easier for me to overcome the grief .New friends and new environment would help me to feel easy. I even remember my mother avoiding me to come home in holidays. She would rather advise me to go places (Mahabaleshwar, Lonavala ,Daman and sometimes to my relatives) .After the first year ,I insisted that I want to get to "MY" home ,I did not want to escape anymore and my mother finally agreed and since then I always make it a point to go to my house every alternative week. I realize how hard it would have been for my mother to live without my father. I talked a lot with my mother whenever I went to my place. Even if I went only for two days, I make it a point to spend maximum amount of time with my mother. She means now world to me. I don’t want to see tears anymore in her eyes, and is willing to do anything for her that could make her happy.

I still feel the uneasiness when I entered into their room. Mother had kept the room the way it always was. From a very young age I started sleeping all alone in my room. Sometimes I would wake up paa(father) at night asking for water (as I dare not to go downstairs alone at night). There are times when I would wake him up at night to talk about my school/toys/crushes etc. Later he got used to me and never allowed me to move to my own room. I remember talking about anything and everything with him. He used to help me in homework, guide me to resolve issues with my friends and used to always tease me with the girls in the class. He always decided my hairstyle, clothes everything.

I did like one girl once and I told him about that. He was at-once shocked and ready to hear my feelings for her and we discuss it like normal friends, but then I realize that that was wrong,and would take me nowhere,I was going through the untrodden ways. I confessed it to him and the next thing I know is that everybody (relatives/parents/friends) teasing me for this.

I remember very well when he first complained about severe lever pain. The doctors mistook an abscess for a typhoid and decided to operate. Though we were very worried, I was not scared. I could never forget when they took him to the operation theatre .His eyes were teary and he was scared . A faint smile appeared in his face when mother followed him to the operation theatre and that's the last time I saw him alive.

May be he sensed that he can't make it. That morning he told me to take care of mother, sisters etc. We share some jokes that morning. That was our last laugh together.

Four years have passed .We don't talk about him often. I call home on his "death anniversary" .Grand mother does not get up from bed that day, I talk to mother about everything but him.

My grandparents and mother are old now and I am so far away on the other part of the country .I visit them once/twice every month. I stay in their room (It is still the same) .I am too busy with my JOB. But whenever I do remember him, I wonder what a different life it would have been!!!

My hands are shaking and won't be able to write anymore..

Hence...