My father died twice

I’d thought, we all die once

But I was wrong

My father died twice.  

First time,

A sudden heart attack

Flattened him to the ground

As he stood watching over the pot

His morning tea coming to a slow boil

His patience cracked, and something snapped;

When my mother walked into the kitchen

She thought he was lying supine

In a somewhat awkward, stiff posture,

Doing his morning yoga

Or prostrating before an unknown God;   

No time to rush him to the hospital

Death had called, unbidden, dragging him away.

All his life he'd wished to die,

A willing martyr to no cause,

But when it finally did strike

It was as though he lay protesting,

Begging and pleading, not to take him away.

My mother had no choice, nor did we

Like obedient sons we never were, while he was alive

We had returned home to collect his ashes in an urn

To safely deposit them in the deep waters of Ganges,

Washing off all the grime of our soul

In the muddy waters;

Stepping into the orange light 

We had felt pure and sanctified.

Though bones and ashes lay clinging to our melting flesh

We had felt strangely relieved

Leaving the source of our life behind,

As though tons of lead, resting upon our breast

Had slipped away.

It was hard picking up the shards of our shattered lives;       

Learning to live without our father

Was somewhat like living in a roofless house,

Everything leaked,

Even an ordinary rain threatened to drown us

When sun beat down mercilessly

Huddled together like school children

We cried to keep ourselves warm and cheerful

Little betrayals of faith and trust

Kept our cash registers ringing through the day  

Sharp, piercing arrows of light  

So difficult to keep the count

That night seemed serene, in comparison,

Not as terrifying and spine-chilling it often is.  

Then one day,

My father returned,

As unexpectedly as he'd left.

Walking right into my heart

This time,

He found a niche, a permanent place; 

Occasionally, he’d sit there,

Frowning at my grandfather,

Kicking up a row, starting a fight,

Pulling swords out of the scabbards,

They’d often fight their battles at my expense.

Slowly their battles became fiercer.

Turning my heart into a battleground,

Father’s 'Id' milling around in futile chase,

Clashing hopelessly against grandfather’s 'Superego.'    

I watched these battles from the margins,  

Father roaring like a lion in a cage,

Grandfather staring back in impotent rage,

His rheumy eyes, darting helplessly 

Only sometimes, his religious piety seeped through

The carbuncles on my father’s flesh;

The battles raged endlessly,

Searing the edges of my heart,

Burning holes into the walls of my mind;

Phantoms danced in the dark, lonely corners

Feeding my fantasies, troubling my soul

So bad it was that I’d begun to wish

Oh, God! Why don’t you just let my father die?

Why doesn’t he just leave it to me to decide,

How to live this life, no longer mine.  

Then one night,

It happened, again

I saw the funeral of my father in a dream.  

It was as though the funeral bells rang twice.

We’ve all heard of the Second Coming of Christ

But the ‘second going’ of a mortal

Is nowhere even in the dreams of dead scriptures.     

That night, my father died again,

Now, I’m truly fatherless,

Feeling as though I’m myself, the first time ever…

A beginning of a new end, or the end of a new beginning,  

I do not know.

All I know is,

My father has died twice,

Once, the way we all do, silently

And next, with all its ceremonial trappings,

Inside the debris of my heart.  

Now if ‘anyone’ tells me,

People taste of death but once,

I laugh and snigger as I walk away,

Thinking how little we know of our ‘goings’ and ‘comings.’