Lessons I have learnt since the passing of my dear father
The duty of a son towards his father is to make others wonder
what great deeds did the father do to deserve such a son-Thirukkural (Chapter 7:70)
My father was a kind man. You could see it in his eyes; He wouldn’t hurt a fly. I remember how as a kid I would get excited just seeing him come pick me up after school. He was a surgeon — something he loved doing, just for the sake of helping others. He never believed in capitalism. He would do surgeries for free if someone couldn’t afford it. Believe me, I am not exaggerating.
He was an author as well. He wrote hundreds of short stories, many of which are still unpublished, and also wrote tons of medical articles on Tamil magazines which was just public awareness material. I adored the man and obviously he loved me with all his heart too. Sadly, he was diagnosed with a fatal disease called Motor Neuron Disease in 2012. You would’ve heard about it before. The famous physicist, Stephen Hawking, had it. Also called by the name Lou Gehrig’s disease, it is a condition which affects your nerves, destroying them slowly, day by day, until you cannot move your own fingers or toes.
He finally succumbed to the illness in 2014. I was a week short of my 20th birthday. I was devastated back then. He struggled with the disease towards the end, and everyone, including himself, felt that death was the only sweet release he could have. I could never come to terms with it for a very long time. But recently, I slowly realised that his passing has taught me things that I could have never imagined:
Never live your life on others terms
This was one of the lessons my father taught me during the last few days he was with me. I never knew that my dear dad who was always smiling and laughing around, had such regrets in his life. He adjusted and always tried to live for other people. He had huge gratification from it, nevertheless. But he called me aside one day, bedridden, hardly able to muster out a few words, and said “…I lived too much for others, son. You don’t do that with your life. Make it your own..” I constantly remind myself of it now and then.
You can never please the world. Who am I kidding? It’s mighty difficult to even please your own ego. So if you feel you are living someone else’s dream — let go of it right now. Make your own decisions. Take full responsibility for your actions. If you fail, you can atleast be proud that you tried on your own.
Being vulnerable doesn’t make you weak
My father was a gentle person. He was so empathetic, I remember him breaking down seeing a movie, where a son is abandoned by his mother, just because he tried protecting her from his fiendish father. He used to say those things affect him so much, that he breaks down just thinking about people who go through their ill-fated lives.
My father was so strong inside-out. He faced so many tribunals in life, so many deaths of his loved ones but still worked on and on for us and others. Still, he never shied away from expressing his true inner feelings. Crying never makes you weak. It only makes you honest. If you think men who cry are weak, remember, Jesus wept!
If you want to publish, do it NOW!
I learnt later from one of my dad’s friends, that he loved writing so much that he was ready to abandon the job of being a surgeon and become a full-time author. He had such passion for writing. Ever since he passed on, I regularly go to his room and try to ponder upon his writings. He had written thousands of articles, short stories, poems — all in his diary, which he wanted to publish but never had the time. He wrote a 400 page novel in Tamil, which never got completed, because he lost the ability to hold a pen after a while (On the bright side, I worked on the novel and it is almost ready to go public)
If you ever feel you want to author a book, publish a novel or even write a small article on Medium — DO IT NOW! You will never find the right moment, you will never find the time later and you will never garner up fresher ideas. The most common mistake we do while trying to write is that we think: ‘..oh.. I don’t know.. Someone else has written about the same topic.. I want something fresh..’ Trust me, nobody cares about originality. It is how you bring your own essence into something, that makes it an interesting read.
Work hard, with all your heart and always be honest
As cliched as it sounds, it is the best lesson a father can ever teach his child. My father was a workaholic. He loved doing things, just for the sheer joy of doing them. He worked at a small hospital in the mornings, had his private clinic at evenings, and he would come home for his nightly writing sessions. I saw him do this day in and day out. Tirelessly. He would never take a day off without reason. He was so loyal to his patients — he used to give his personal number to them. I remember being woken up on so many occasions at night, by his phone, only to hear him prescribe antibiotics for a baby who’s been having a bad stomach for the past week. He was also brutally honest. He would just say, “Oh it was there for a week, but you had to call me only at 2am, is it? Anyway take these tablets twice a day and let me know tomorrow”. He never lied. He never spoke behind anyone’s back.
It is not about what job you do, where you work or who you work with. It is always and always, only about, how much you love doing it. If you do your job with all your heart and sincerity, you don’t need to work, you only need to play.
Think twice before you pin your hopes on your children
It is evident from the whole write-up that I love my dad. He was my shining star. I really wanted to impress him, be the best version of myself for him. He always wanted me to be a doctor. I eventually did. I got into a good medical school through merit. He had such high hopes for my career, that he constantly reminded me of what plans he had for my future. He wanted me to take care of his clinic, his surgical practice, his patients and take over his good-will. SNAP. Life had other plans. He was gone too soon. We had to vacate the clinic which was on rent, even before I could graduate.
If you ever feel you have unaccomplished dreams that your children will take care of, please let it go. Give your children wings and watch them soar. They would obviously falter at points — but in the end, flying is their own responsibility.
Hug your mother more often
Yes. You. Go do it now if she’s with you. If you’re reading this, stop, and go hug her now and come back. Hug her for an extra minute. Let her know how important she is. You don’t know what she has been through. Often, we think we know more than our parents. We know what’s best for us. We know how the world works. We tend to think our mom is a child and she isn’t right. Let me tell you a secret, she’s not right a 100% of the time. She’s right 200% of the time.
For every person, his/her mom is the strongest woman he/she has ever met. I am no exception. I feel blessed to have my mom with me. She has never uttered a word about how difficult things are for her. She only makes things happy and easy for her kids. That’s all that a mother knows. Cherish her. Celebrate her. You are never going to find someone as unconditional as your mom.
There are diseases that you know nothing about
So you’ve almost come to the end of this preaching article (Sigh of relief?) How many of you knew about MND before this? Or do you know about it right now? Motor Neuron Disease is rare. 2 in 100,000 people get it every year. It kills you slowly while your cognition is still intact. It’s like putting you in a box which won’t move after a while, and printing an expiry date on the box beforehand. My father knew the grisly details of the disease and had to just endure the mental agony of just waiting for Grim Reaper to show up.
I was fortunate enough to be posted at a Neurology wing last year, where I saw 2–3 patients who had the disease. It was disturbing for me to see them going through the exact same thing my father went through. I spoke to their families and felt how deep their anxiety must be. I wondered what each family must be going through.
Just for an example, there is another disease called Guillian Barre Syndrome. It is a disease that leave you totally paralysed from neck down. What causes it? A simple diarrhea. GBS can leave you bed ridden for months. And the worst part is that it affects such youngsters who are just 25–30.
Why am I telling this? Just to gently remind you that there are so many things that you have no control over. There are diseases that we have no idea about. There are people who are enduring difficulties, whose loved ones are sick and are struggling to make ends meet. Just be kind. It literally takes no effort from your side. If you complain about your boss being rude, your vacation getting spoilt, or your plans ruined because of COVID-19, remember to count your blessings.
Death is never the end
Stephen Colbert : What do you think happens when we die, Keanu?
Keanu Reeves: ..Well.. I know that the ones who love us will miss us..
The Matrix star, Keanu Reeves, famously replied on Stephen Colbert’s talk show, when asked about his idea about life after death.
It has been 6 years since my father passed on. Not a day goes by without thinking of his words, his values, his jokes or his memories. Everytime I think I’ve forgotten how my dad used to sound, he appears in my dreams just to remind me that he went nowhere, and still exists in my subconscious. He talks to me as if he never left and it is upto me to look for the signs he keeps sending.
Death as we know it, is only the end of the physical realm of our existence. What we call as laws of physics right now, was once called superstition and magic, centuries earlier. Some day, Humanity will rise above mere mortality and achieve heights which we cannot even fathom to see, circa 2020.
We keep running around after degrees, money and the perfect life. When we reach that destination, we are never happy and end up striving for something else, something better. In the end, death takes away the whole meaning behind all that running. Our tiny attempts to control our little worlds turn futile, as the cosmos is greater than you can ever imagine. At those junctures, it only matters how well you loved, how hard you laughed and how easy you made it for another fellow human being to exist.
To all those who have lost their loved ones during the COVID pandemic, may God bless you all and your families.
They never left. They are eternally living on, in our hearts.
Dr. Dheeraj Panchaksharam
