It was Only Yesterday

My father could not have dreamt of what was going to happen to him that day in his wildest dreams. It was a tragedy that shattered all of us.

It was on 29th March 2006 that I got a call from my brother Tenzin asking me if I called home. I immediately sensed something was very wrong. I pressed him to tell me what it was. I heard only one word and there I was - everything around me fell down in pieces of thousand shattered dreams.
And the next day, we were heading home; some five hundred kilometers but that takes you two days. We finally reached home after two days to find all of my family members and relatives sitting in such mourn and the room was too tightly suffocating with tears and gloominess. My mother broke down when she saw us. I thought she was going to break down completely; completely I mean. We tried to console her but inside we were all crying. We wanted to see our father sitting next to us, talking to us as he always did. Where is he? I wanted to call him. I thought he would hear me.

I went to meet my parents after I gave my civil service examination in December 2005. It was only one yesterday that all of us sat together and talked of tomorrows to come. Wasn’t it only yesterday? Where is he now? I was almost growing desperate looking for him, wanting him present. My father…why did he have to leave all of us behind and go away all of a sudden? Could fate be so cruel?
I have always known that death is natural and it will come to all of us. But it wasn’t any consolation. I knew the whole world left us with him. I thought I knew how hard it was to lose someone very dear but I never thought I would be left with nothing around but shattered dreams. It wasn’t easy…it was not a case of shrugging off my shoulder to simply be. My father wasn’t there to hear me. Please father, please come back. He wasn’t to hear me or if he heard me, I didn’t know because I couldn’t hear him.

We do not talk about him much now but I know all of us think of him everyday and every moment. It is because of him we stand here today as we are. He was the man who guided us to be true and honest. He taught us that honesty is the greatest virtue and not just the best policy. He was the man we believed in and believe in him we still do.

It was only one yesterday that all of us were together as a family – we were all happy and we had nothing so much to worry. And today, here we are. There is no one to answer me when I call ‘father’. I ask myself time and again, why he had to leave all of us in the cruel hands of fate and go away all of a sudden - I see him in my dreams every night but he doesn’t tell me why. Death snatched him away from all of us when none of us were prepared. Prepared I know none of us will be until the stark truth really grab but it still was too hard for my family.

It was only one yesterday…