People Might Die But Their Acts Don't

I realized what death was for the first time when my dad passed away almost 15 years ago. I remember very well the night I learned he passed away. He had an accident; was hit by a car while he was riding his bike. In the hospital, he was transferred to the ICU. Mum asked me if I would go to visit him with her and my brother. I told her: "I will go tomorrow morning". When tomorrow had arrived, however, he wasn’t there anymore.

A few minutes after they had returned, we got a call. It was when landline phones were still common. My dad’s second wife called and talked to my Mum. I was standing beside Mum when she looked at me and said; “Your father died, Zainab”. I don’t remember whether I cried or not but I was in total silence and shock for a long time!
The next day was the funeral, Mum didn’t want me to go with them. I didn’t know why! Maybe she didn’t want me to have that experience. I insisted on attending and looked for black clothes to wear. I remember every detail of that day, I even remember that I got my period then.

At the funeral, I didn’t cry either. We went to the tomb. We waited for his corpse to be brought from the mosque and to be buried. As soon as I saw his coffin being carried on men’s shoulders in the distance, I cried my eyes out.
A few months later, I visited him, I mean I visited his grave. This was my only visit to him. I needed to face the fact that he wasn’t alive anymore and there was no way to see him again.

I sometimes feel I miss him. The memories I have of his facial features are shady but luckily I have some photos to refresh my memory when it doesn’t work well.
Although he wasn’t here for us as a father and I don’t have a lot of memories, to be specific good ones, of him, it wasn’t an easy experience to lose him.

My father was 53 when he had me and 69 when he passed away. I wasn’t a kid then but I was going through the crucial stage of adolescence, which was the worst time of my life. It’s when adolescent girls start to embrace their femininity and get to know boys and men more intimately and the first guy they get close to is their father. But mine wasn’t here for me!

He hadn’t lived with us for many years before his death but I had a hope we would have a second chance to have bridges built between him and us. I would have asked him if he hated us since he thought we took our mother’s side? But she was the only one who took full care of us.
If he didn’t hate us, why did he allow his troubles with my mother to destroy his relationship with us? A lot of questions with no answers!

Sometimes when I think of what happened I wonder if maybe it was better than that he had lived and had a kind of dementia. Then he wouldn’t probably have remembered a big part of his life or even in worst cases wouldn’t have remembered me!