Losing a parent is a deeply personal experience, one that invokes intense emotions. As my sister and I watched the remains of my father slipping into the electric furnace, I noticed that her shudder matched mine. We were both seedlings of his gift to life. We felt the same pain, gnawing silently at our insides while we watched him in his last days. He went from speechlessness to just staring into the walls, unable to move his limbs. We spent sleepless nights ridden with worry that we did not share with anybody, but shared a kindred silence in adjoining rooms, the same thoughts running riot. We had been asked to let him go and not be selfish. He was 91 and willing to embrace death.

But that was a whole different story. It wove itself into our daily lives, never letting us forget that elders needed more care. My sister over the years had turned her whole life into reaching out to whoever needed any help, be it a friend, a boss, or a relative. She just was stoically there, never judging, just stepping into people’s shoes, ones that could not relate or were just not present for their own. She silently stepped in and did the needful. I grudgingly watched as she lost her own son, cursing, asking her what it was that made her care so much for people who didn’t even share their lives with her. What made her this person who took over so brutally? I say it now with affection almost. Perhaps there are a few that God allotted to be these selfless helpers and she was one of them.

Dementia and loneliness had become my father’s only friends. He often talked about not wanting to live, of being useless in this world, a burden to his family and caregivers. We wondered if we had failed somewhere. But life has its atrocities – it covers up when it does not want you to feel more than necessary. I went on, putting things together, with work, family, and all and sundry mostly on survival mode, while she went to see him and took care of him, taking his duahs and abuses all in her stride. She was living out what she loved the most – taking care of her own. I watched from afar, as she nursed him, heard him, and forgave him everything. My resentment grew with every passing day at the unfairness of it all.

Bhagwandas Gordhandas Bathija had been a big man in a small town, commanding the respect very few people do, manning a 100-year-old office with what he called the backbone of the industry. What he was, was simply a banker who knew how to do it right. Sindhis after the Partition had moved to India with less than nothing, but this family had established life and work in Salem (Tamil Nadu). He studied in Yercaud, hardly educated enough to make a success of his life. But sometimes one does not need an education to do that, one has to be street smart. He rose in his father’s eyes with diligent hard work, fathered three children and then there was no looking back as he went on to write his own destiny.

The parent-child bond is one of the most foundational relationships in a person’s life, and its rupture creates an emotional vacuum that can feel insurmountable. Losing a parent engenders a whirlwind of emotions. Grief, sadness, anger, confusion, and even guilt are common responses to this profound loss. I started to feel anger. So how did I remember him? He never threw me up in the air like I saw other fathers did to their children, never read me a book, we were sent away to boarding school to get a decent education, never mollycoddled but given a life of luxury when we came home. We craved nothing, and were encouraged to be world citizens. He expected loyalty, integrity, and marriages made-to-order. Love did not cut the deal. Dinner was served promptly at 8, everybody had to attend. We scuttled as we heard his car in the driveway, after all people used to set their watches on his appearances in most places.

He had definitely become a man to reckon with. We marveled everyday as we watched him choose his after-dinner pipe (he had everything meticulously marked for different days). Just as he was a collector of things, he was also passionate about them – whether it was watches, clothes or just his love for acquiring antiques or land. The funniest was the fact that he owned a gun (licensed of course) bequeathed to him by his father, but left its bullets always in a safe. I always wondered if he knew how to use it and how an estranged gun would actually do its job if ever needed. Then the sadness set in and I forgave him the times that were not spent together, the tidings that were not considered, and the thoughts that were discarded, discredited just because ‘you are a writer and think you know everything!’

Memories always rush in at the darndest times, when one is trying hard to gulp down the current feelings of sorrow. The death of a loved one is an irrevocable event that goes on to hound an individual’s life. The emotional upheaval can be pretty overwhelming, as the bereaved grapple with the finality of a loved one’s death and the void left behind. Different people find different coping mechanisms to navigate their grief. Mine was to go into silence, not share with another soul the extent of my pain, and deal with it in time. Hiding in a safe place to process complex emotions has always been my thing. Grieving has always been private. I channel my personal grief into my personal growth and achievements. Others, like my sister, just grow into more compassionate, empathetic, and resilient human beings.

It’s always hard, either way one looks at it. The most we girls can best do is to honor our father’s memory by keeping it alive, adhering to the things he wanted us to be, carrying on his legacy, mixed with guidance from our emotions and loyalty. His shoes will indeed be hard to fill as he left a stamp on the little town that he grew up in, and finally left as a peer to a generation of people who cited his example.