Thank you Thathi for being mine
A year ago today, I lost you; my father, provider, protector, comforter and friend. You died and my life crumbled before my eyes.
I wanted to write a tribute capturing the essence of you, and I realized if
I shared a glimpse into my grieving journey (the real one instead of the “I’m happy
& okay” façade I project outwardly to the world) and it helps even one person, who is going through the same (or will) not feel alone, then that would be the biggest tribute to the kind, generous, helpful nature that made Ray De Silva the great human being and gentleman that he was. So here goes…
You spent five long months, undergoing chemotherapy, putting up the bravest fight against Leukemia and you beat it… to then a few months later be admitted to hospital for a fever and then die in a matter of days. I can’t think of anything more tragic, cruel or unfair. As I type the factual details of your loss, the all too familiar tears and hard lump in my throat return.
A year later, though the initial shock and the emotional fog of your death has subsided - the reality that you are dead - and the weight of that reality hasn’t fully made its impact on my consciousness. It hits me in waves - unbearable, overwhelming waves - and I’ve lived the last year in a partially surreal existence. My life as I knew it and who I was/am is demarcated clearly by your death – DR & AR: During Ray & After Ray.
A part of me keeps hoping (praying), I will wake up one day and this awful nightmare will be over. I will walk down the stairs and you are there sipping your tea and reading the newspaper. Or my phone will ring and it will be you calling to ask me what shall we have for dinner? Or I’ll come home from work one day and you will ask me to sit and type out your mails and texts for you again… A 100 small day to day interactions that I took for granted and would now give everything to have just one more day of.
Living without you and grieving your death has been the longest, hardest and most humbling experience – and there is definitely no silver lining and no finish line in sight. Grief has become a close friend, who visits me whenever it wants and that sense of emptiness and missing-ness is relentless and heartbreaking. When I strip away the comfort that I have gotten from other people or my faith – it has been a solitary, lonely experience. One that another will not understand until it happens to them.
This is what death and loss look like, or what it has been for me.
The only two thoughts that have comforted me are that you are not suffering anymore and that I was the luckiest person to have had you as my father. Any amount of grief I have to bear is worth having had you for the time I had you….
It is the greatest privilege and honour of my life to be Ray De Silva’s daughter …. Thank you thathi for being mine…. I love and miss you every single second of every single day.