Why the day my father died struck me with a brief moment of intense joy.

It’s been a while since I’ve written to you. I’ve been putting it off.
There was only one thing I could write about: the day of my father’s death.

He passed away on the 22nd of December, 2023. As is our custom, we observed 49 days of mourning. Since then, I have been settling his estate.

After his terminal diagnosis in early November, my father deteriorated over 6 weeks. It was fast enough to prevent the prolonging of his suffering, but long enough to witness his deterioration. Every few days, his condition would change, and there would be a new challenge to solve.

I learnt a few things about myself.

The first was that in the face of tragedy, I had the capacity to remain calm and clear-minded.

The second was that when watching a loved one suffer, I would have no qualms shouldering the burden.

You see, though in some ways my father and I were very different men, in others we were very much alike. We both understood silence. Silent communication. Silent presence. Silent power. I knew what he was thinking and feeling most of the time.

Yes, indeed, in his silence, my father’s body spoke to me.

When he was diagnosed, I asked him a few simple questions, and nothing more. There was nothing left to say.

I assigned myself to night duty. Family and friends would visit during the day, but at night we were alone. For six weeks, it was like only the two of us existed: short enough to feel fast, long enough to feel slow. His body gradually melted away.

The night before he died, my father had a sudden onset of pain. Like his abdomen was being ripped apart. He was too weak to say anything, too weak to cry out. If he had the strength, I think he would have been screaming.

The next hour was my most difficult. The medication I gave him did nothing. For days, my father had lost the strength to eat and drink: now, he was experiencing unquenchable thirst, unfillable hunger, and now, unstoppable pain.

We called the palliative nurses to come. They arrived within 15 minutes.

“Your father’s condition has deteriorated. We will give him what he needs. After that his body will rest and he will fall asleep. You should call your family, he has 24 hours left at most.”
“But he will no longer be in pain?”
“He will no longer be in pain.”

Nurses are criminally undervalued and underpaid.

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Over the next hour, we watched his body relax. My father called out for his children - his final words - and he fell asleep for the last time. My brothers and sisters stood watch one by one until the morning.

I was not in the room when he passed. As my sister recalls, his breathing was weak but rhythmic, and it suddenly stopped. She had barely noticed. We checked his vitals, and confirmed he was gone. His passing was peaceful and surrounded by his family.

As is our custom, we were to leave his body untouched for 8 hours; relatives would come to recite the sutras.

It was a beautiful scene, such as it was. Light poured into the room from the window. Women surrounding the bed, chanting in unison, the notes of phonetic Sanskrit echoing off the walls. And my father, blanketed in white cotton, motionless, untouched, unmoved, his mouth agape from his final breath.

I stood there, outside the bedroom and across the hallway, admiring the scene. Keeping my gaze upon his face, I reached out to his body, as I had done countless times, and listened.

There! THERE!! I saw it. I sensed it. Like a mirror that bore no reflection.
Where there was always something, there was nothing.
Nothing, nothingness, and beyond that, nothing again.

And I understood.

One more lesson to give me on the day of his death.

He had prepared himself for this day years, decades, and, inadvertently, had prepared me.

Every word he had uttered, every lesson he taught, every moment he kept, every day he lived, he kept it in his flesh. Every word had been sourced from pain.
And the word itself was pain.
The agony of his mortality.

A lifetime of suffering, of burden, of resilience.
A lifetime of carrying water, earth, and salt, and stone.

And Now there was nothing.
Now he had been released.
Now he could be at peace.

He had left his body
And relinquished all of his pain
And left a sunken abyss for me to see, into a sea of bliss.

This is what I saw.
And the understanding struck me hard with joy.

We had delivered it to him.