My farher

 My father and my son Rostam It was 3 months ago that my father passed away. I remember it was day before the start of Ramadhan. Since then I had visited Sitiawan to meet Pak Chor, Pak Ngah and Mak Chu and Mak Ngah, my father's brother and sister. I also visited our old abandoned house and was overcome with some sort of grief to see it so quiet and without life. I went to Kampung Seberang Parit, my childhood playground and stayed at Mat Daud's house. The next day I went to Bagan Serai to visit Mak Ngah to spend a few hours with her. On the way home I visited Mak Cik and Pak Cik in Taiping, with whom I stayed for a year in Bruas. I was happy to visit my father's brothers and sisters for my father himself was very close with them. After waiting for 6 days in the hospital there was no improvement in my father's condition. My brothers,sisters, nieces and nephew, uncle and unties and friends visited my father, but my father was getting weaker each day.My father was a strong willed person in fighting pain and suffering, and it was pathetic to see him lying helplessly dependant on life support machine. Each time I saw the heaving chest of my father and hearing the mechanical hissing of the respirator, I imagined that my father hated all this support and would want to face his fate in natural condition. I called my father a few times,but he was too weak to response. But his eyelids and moving lip showed that he wanted to say something to me. On the sixth day it was time to bring my father home so that he will meet God at home. It was at almost 7 pm that my father reached my sister's house. We fixed up the oxygen for him, and went to the mosque for Yassin. After maghrib, as I was waiting for the Yassin prayer, my wife called saying that I should rush home immediately because my father was in a very critical condition. I rushed home to see that my father had met God almighty. That night there laid my father in the living room of sister's house, and I sat beside him saying prayer, and overcome with emotion that somebody whom I love was no more with us. My father was good father in his own way. He was open with all of us , and being the eldest I felt I had special relationship with him. I had gone through a lots of ups and downs in the journey of life he had gone through in bringing us up. Our life in Kampung Seberang Parit Sitiawan, Kuala Sepit and Kampung Serdang were troubled with efforts to meet ends meets. I was involved with kampung jobs since age nine to meet the family expenses. I remember going merawai, tapping rubber, looking for cockles, ferrying passengers on sampan,cutting mangrove trees and herding goats as jobs I did to support the family.Having good education, with the inspiration of my mother, was a firing ambition that keep firing me up in order to escape the dificult life I was experiencing.Unlike my mother, my father was a relaxed man never worrying about anything,pursuing life as it came along, and always positive that things would get better. The next day was the burial day.Despite my wihes to bury him in Kampung Sitiawan, he was burried in Kuala Lumpur. I sweated out with changkul burying my father and sat on the prayer's mat saying prayers for my father whom I missed very much. However I was relieved my father had finally met God peacefully after an ilness of about a week, and that we as his children had done everything possible to make his parting an easy one.