Now that he’s gone, I missed him

It was 23h45 when we received a call that my father had passed on. B asked how am I, I said I am okay, turned around and went back to sleep. But I couldn’t sleep after hearing that my father is no more. I was confused. I thought of my gran and my brother because they were the closest to him. I started thinking about when exactly should I go home. Maybe a day before the funeral? I wasn’t too sure.

The first person I called was my brother who didn’t answer his phone. Then I called my mother and we spoke for a while. I then called my cousin, my dad’s first niece who explained what really happened and that my brother found him.

I wept. I wept so hard at the thought that my father died alone. I wept at the thought of what my brother experienced. I wept knowing that the text message I sent him the night before, he never got to read it because by then, he was already gone. It was so painful and it hurt. Only then it hit me that I had lost my father.

B and I left immediately. I love long drives, but this time around, driving from Durban to home was the longest drive I didn’t look forward to. Every call I received from friends sending their condolences and asking what happened made me relive the thought of how my dad died and that he is really gone. I wanted to get home and see my mom, brother, sister and mostly my grandmother.

For the first time, I saw my grandmother cry and so broken. She kept saying that my father was like a king to her. I realised why they were so inseparable. She loved my dad. I had seen everyone except my brother. When I did see him, he opened up and shared with detail, what really happened.

My father had a heart attack. He was not a sickly person. He woke up on a beautiful Tuesday to get on with his daily routine and he just had a heart attack and died. A week before he had been to the doctor because of short breath. He was given medication which was working. Granny was with him the Sunday and he was fine, he was not sick and he had stopped having short breaths. Then Tuesday came and he died. Left all of us questioning what really happened.

My dad and I were not that close. I loved him, honoured and respected him. I remember on my wedding day. I was upstairs looking down and saw him rushing in the door like a proud dad who will be walking his daughter down the aisle in a few minutes. I remember that evening, he told B that he has all his blessings and a week later, he sent my father in law a text message that read “Take care of my daughter, you are a man of honour and I know he is in the right hands with you.”