HUMAN

 
A TRIBUTE TO DADDY: How it should have been written.

It’s been a little under two weeks since I posted my first blog post and the response has been so OVERWHELMING!! 🙈💥 A lot of inspiration and motivation pouring out from everywhere and I can’t thank you all enough! Four hundred and eighty views and still counting, you have absolutely no idea how excited I am💃

This next post reveals a bit of me that very few people know about. I’m generally a happy child but please permit me to be a bit emotional today.

One thing that I’ve never quite understood is why we only speak of the good aspects of someone’s life when they die and act like they never did wrong😕. Why do we make it look as though the person was perfect? Why gather round a lifeless corpse and act like the person was beyond human even though we know very well the sort of things the person did? Why do we pretend? Why do we cry for the benefit of others when we’d otherwise do nothing?? Just tell me…why???

💭💭”Trying hard to fight these tears

I’m crazy with worry

Messing with my head these fears

I’m so sorry

I know I’ve got to get it out 

But I can’t take it

Guess that’s what losing you is all about…”💭💭

It didn’t have to end like this, daddy you deserved better. I stand here, not only with a heart full of grief and pain, but that of regret as well. That moment mommy came back home from the hospital with your clothes and without you, I just knew that was it. It may sound silly to you but my first thought then was “I never got to take a selfie with you.” To me, that was a reminder of how our relationship was – anything but intimate😣😣. 

I wish we had been close. I regret not making the effort in trying to understand you and why you did the things you did. I’ve always thought you were the one at fault here – I mean after all, you should have taken the initiative! But are you really to blame? I ask myself. Communication after all is a two-way street.

There are so many reminders of you everywhere and for the rest of my life, I’ll have to keep finding a way to accept the fact that you’re truly gone.

I’ve never felt so alone like I do right now. All my life, for as long as I can remember, you made all the major decisions in my life. You never gave me the chance to be me. I never got the opportunity to do anything for me. I led the most part of my life for you – trying to please you and looking for your approval I never quite got. It was always you..you…YOU!! You had no idea how I tried so hard to make you Proud of me but it felt as if nothing I ever did was right. It got to that point where I didn’t even know who I was anymore. And then out of the blue, you’re gone. For the first time ever, I really don’t know what to do with my life. You left me to do what exactly????? Why bring me up this way if you knew you wouldn’t be around forever? Why would you leave me halfway?😩😩 why on earth would you do that to me??

Verbal abuse is the worst form of abuse to ever have to go through and I pray to God you never experience it, ever. It has a way of killing your spirit and trust me, that is by far the worse than the kind of pain you experience through caning or slapping or belt whipping! I don’t know why you constantly slapped my spirit with hurtful words. I still don’t understand why you found it extremely difficult to give compliments. It’s like you knew just the right words to use each time you wanted to break me down. You did it so skilfully – at a point it seemed as though you derived some sort of joy from seeing me broken and hurt. It’s sad because all I ever needed was an “it’s okay. You can do it” to keep me going and not an “I told you so” retort.😪 I’ve always felt inferior because of this, and Lord knows I still do…even now. 

It tears me apart that my kid brothers don’t seem to remember anything good you did. It’s like they hated your very existence. But I’d be a liar if I said you did nothing right. I’m grateful for the prayer life I have as a result of your constant “nagging” every evening. I remember how you would come into our rooms at bedtime and close the louvre blades and curtains and then ask us to pray before sleeping. Even now, when I’m about to sleep, a part of me keeps hoping that you’ll pass by and remind me to pray. It’s hard to fully accept your absence.

Now whenever I hear country music and eighties classic love songs, all it think of is you. How you would sit outside and stretch your legs and just listen. You taught me the value of good music – Tina Turner, Phill Collins, Whitney Houston, Kenny Rogers, Dolly Patton, Celine Dion among others, and for that I’m eternally grateful.

I’m sorry for all the terrible things I ever said to you. If I had known you were dying, rather than spend the last two years of your life constantly arguing with you and being a “freedom fighter”, I would have spent the time trying to just understand you. I read somewhere in a physics textbook that “to every action, there’s an opposite and equal reaction.” I am truly sorry for everything – but truth is, I wouldn’t have said or done any of the things that I did if you hadn’t pushed me to that point.

I bore so much resentment in me until now. I swore I’d never forgive you for what you did to me. But I now realise that the more I keep it all in, the more I keep hurting on the inside.

My tribute is way different from the others, I know. 

But I did this to let us all know that we are far from perfect. 

My dad made mistakes and did certain things wrongly. 

We all do. 

He wasn’t perfect…

And that’s what made him HUMAN

….just like everyone of us.😔😔

“To err is human…

To forgive is divine…”

I’m learning to let go. It’s the only I can truly find myself and be free.

Like John Green would say, “Grief doesn’t change us, it reveals us.”