Have you made a promise?
January 28, 2013
Tears rolled uncontrollably
through her sheen-less eyes as she ran frantically through the corridor of
hospital with her hands holding baby in her belly.
When she saw the dead body of her
father on hospital bed she gasped for air and collapsed.
Past one year she has been through
an internal turmoil. She fought with her father and left home with unfaithful
partner who ran away leaving her pregnant. She couldn’t dare reach out to her father for
she disrespected him. Her father who was her mother too.
When she regained her senses, nurse
consoled her and gave the letter her father left for her.
“My lovely child,
You see, they were talking about
your eyes being so beautiful like your mother before I saw you. I wanted
surgeons to save your mother but it was her true desire to bring you in this
world. Though I had you with me as she wished, it was a painful day. I know you
have not yet felt the pain of losing your most loved one, I wish you never do.
After the rites, when I first
held you in my hands, I cried with you. And with your first smile, i
experienced renascence and my heart walked out of me. I missed my heart beats
and then it was as if I had a new heart, the most delicate, the most fragile
one which cared more for you than anything else in this world. It changed
everything within me. I could feel your pain before you cried for milk. For
nights I couldn't sleep and kept looking at you. I wanted to be your mother I
could never be.
All I ever wanted was to see you
happy. I had made a promise. A promise to your mother that I would always keep
you happy. And you were such a good child I never had to try.
You wouldn't possibly know my
happiness as you grew in a beautiful young woman. For reasons to protect you
from hurting yourself, I might have opposed you and warned you. But you see,
even when I grew older, I had the same delicate heart that you changed when I
first held you.
Last year you left home and I
couldn't stop you. I could never be your mother, you see. But I had made a
promise, and keeping it would mean letting you go with your beloved.
Don't feel guilty for your words,
I thought you to use them the way you do. When you said 'I hate you,' before
leaving home I knew what you really meant.
I know, you must be thinking one
day you would come back and ask your father about his health and prepare him a
good dinner. You must be thinking your father wouldn't die, daughters do, but
that would be a lie.
I want you to know that you were
my heart that walked out of me. There is nothing that I want most than your
happiness. I want you to know that you have been a great child and when I am
gone, I am gone content.
It is no longer possible for me
to keep your mothers promise. You see, I am a dead man. I want you to do
something for me. I want you to keep your mother’s promise when I am gone. I
want you to be happy now and hereafter forever.
I Love you and your mother do
too.”
As she read the letter, her eyes
blurred from the gathering of tears in her eyes. She cried before making a
promise to herself.
Our blood we nurture with our own
blood would love, hurt and disobey for it needs to find its way and be a blood
that begets a new one.