Postscript

‘Every story is us.’

RUMI

The last six months of my father’s life were not the easiest for me to witness. It was by far one of the most defining periods of my life. I realised how quickly time passes and, sadly, how many opportunities with him I had missed. I started wondering about growing old, and how fragile that phase of one’s life must be. The level of control you are forced to surrender because your body just doesn’t have the same stamina it had before, even though your mind may still be as sharp as ever. It’s the fatigue of life’s lessons that slows you down.

Growing old to me now feels like a rite of passage. It makes me wonder about my own life and how much of it I have fully been present in. One lives life with a set of values and rules that you hope and pray will be enough to guide you into a direction that pleases God, pleases your family and those who profess to love you. We are raised in communities where the rules and terms of engagement are communicated at a very early age; every word and rule ingrained in our psyche. Love comes later.

In so many of those moments, while I was living up to everyone’s expectations, I wondered whether I even allowed myself to be pleased with ME, who I was and what I had become. Elizabeth Gilbert in her book Eat, Pray, Love writes: ‘Hadn’t I wanted this? I had actively participated in every moment of the creation of this life. So why didn’t I see myself in any of it? The only thing more impossible than staying… was leaving. I didn’t want to hurt anybody, I wanted to slip quietly out the back door and not stop running until I reached Greenland.’ And so I left. It’s not easy to make choices that very often exclude those you love and what is expected of you. You hear the whispers of disapproval and feel the eyes of judgement on you, and you sit with what you know are memories that will haunt you no matter where your life takes you.

My father was my voice of reason. He assured me that no matter where I found myself in the world, God connects us every minute of every day and night, and so there cannot be regrets about speaking my truth and following my life’s journey; life is a journey and it must be travelled with courage and enthusiasm. He would inhale the sweet and fragrant smells of everything I cooked in my kitchen.

My father shaped me in so many ways that I can see nuances of him in my own reflection. My father taught me how to appreciate not only the wonder of creation, but also to see its beauty and to enjoy every bit of it. He cherished the smallest of gestures; he was kind-hearted and he was undoubtedly the wisest man I have ever known. During my moments of ambiguity and drifting and during my moments of prayer, I am certain of this, that I have never missed anyone as much as I miss him.

And so I hope I have come close to telling this story, ‘the story of us’, as aptly as he would have been able to tell it – with warmth and animation. I wish I could have had him beside me as the pages of this book came to life, sealing a promise that I had made to him.

My heart’s longing is only that you, the reader, see – through the pictures of this book and the pages you turn – that in every story that is told and every recipe written it is, in fact, just ‘us’…