There can only be one event that can hands-down be considered as the most significant experience in my short existence. The magnitude of its impact in forming who I am now I can only begin to fathom. I can ponder and debate about the depth of its effects on me, how I was before and after, or if I changed for the better but the fact remains that I am changed because of it. One of the pillars of this safe and sheltered abode I have grown to call home was shattered. My father is dead.
I say it as though it sounds like a continuous event. Like his death is that smell of wet grass right after it rains. It's not really overpowering but it is also not too faint for you not to notice that it is there. It's like that strange feeling that it happened somewhere between a long time ago and just a few moments have passed. It's not quite one or the other. It just is.
And I say it is indeed a life-altering twinkling. How can I not? At seventeen, my family was my whole world. My father served as the prop that supported the walls that protected us; my mother took the role of the light that bathed us with radiance and bliss; and my siblings who played an eventful part of who I am now, they were my walls. Except that the man whom I called "Dad" has left that haven we once shared. He was that guy who crushed the cockroaches under my bed. He was that guy who got my kite off a tree. He was that guy who bought me dirty ice cream on hot summer afternoons. He was that guy who read me stories before I went to sleep. He was that guy who watched over me as I slept. And now without him, I feel I've lost my champion, my provider, my friend and my father all at once. All in one blow.
Boxers, with all their ferociousness, give one another blows to the stomach, the chest, and the head. Sooner or later, one of them will succumb to the torture and will fall down. My dad passed away and I felt as though somebody gave me simultaneous jabs and pokes to all parts of my body.
