First Year of Death - پہلی برسی

Posing - my brother's wedding

I sat in the Annual General Meeting this time last year, taking minutes, making sure all the slides were transitioning according to the words I had written. I was finding it challenging to keep focus.

An ASL interpreter I had been communicating with on email the week before came up to me and said hi; said she was curious to meet me as we both share the same last name – ‘Mahmood’. I think I smiled faintly. She said her father’s name was Mahmood. I said, my father’s name is Mahmood too.

That chance interaction was powerful for me in that moment in time. Someone said my father’s name on the day he was being buried six thousand miles away – as I sat all alone, in a room full of hundred people.

It has been a year.

I recently asked one of my sisters to share a photo of his grave with me. I felt the distance, and my absence in his moment of death when I looked at the photo.

And in the very next moment, I felt frustration that it wasn’t a good photo. The gravestone cuts off right at the top. The composition and angle are simply poor to say the least. I chuckled as I witnessed my own contrasting thoughts.

Final resting place

I have realized that it is hard to lose a parent you love. Even if you understand that it was their time. Even if you know that death is a reality of life.

I have also realized that it is hard to cope with death when you are absent from the time of pain that precedes and follows.

The last time I was present when my father had come very close to death was when I was 16. I had sneakily sabotaged my arranged marriage by writing a nasty letter to the groom's family. I had also lied to my father and applied to a business school instead of following the expected path of enrolling in Home Economics College for (good) girls. He suffered a massive heart attack, his third, and the doctors had asked us to say our final good byes. His words to me on his presumed deathbed were ‘I am dying because of you.’ 

I am so thankful that he lived then. And that his real final words to me, even if only in text, were I love you beti. There is consolation, if not closure, in that.

I still have you on skype. I still have you in my whatsapp messages. 

I love you too Abbu.

When I was cute

On my daughter's 6th Birthday

Strict father, gentle grandfather. I was forever jealous

Eid, 2005

My graduation, 2001. He was mad at me for chopping my hair off.
He noticed my bare arms as I discreetly unravelled them from under
my dupatta for the photo. I got into a lot of trouble after to say the least

My first wedding, 2003 - he thought my trouble-making days were finally over.
He was so wrong