Remembering Father on Mother’s Day

Loss of one’s father is a shock that is impossible to recover from. Don’t get me wrong. Mother is no less important. Mother is the very essence of your being - she brings you into this world, suffers sleepless nights so that you sleep soundly, bears with your tantrums, sicknesses, understands your needs even before you express them and provides the very basis of emotional well being. Loss of one’s mother is devastating.

But, when father leaves the world, the feeling is of complete rudderelssness. Who would you go to explain your grown-up problems, who is your sounding board now? Where is the person by whose side you would just sit and sip your tea saying nothing, but all is understood and shared? One feels like a branch adrift in the waves after the collosal trunk of the tree has been cut and taken away. Where does the rootless branch find its moorings now?

After months of grieving one realises that this rootless branch is actually the colossal trunk to its own little branches and must, therefore, dig in. One must therefore bear and move on. Easy to say, but one must now grieve within, not outwardly.