A few months ago, my dad passed away unexpectedly. It has been a roller-coaster of swirling emotions since. It still feels surreal. Did that really happen? How am I supposed to feel? Is that how that story ends?

Now I am left to my own thoughts, trying to organise them, trying to make sense of what has happened. Over the years, I have discovered the wonderful practice of writing. Writing is a way to create separation from your thoughts. To get them out of your head, to put them concretely on paper, to see them clearly, to organise them piece by piece. Writing is a way to be more truthful to yourself. You may be able to be lie to yourself in your head, but writing words on paper demands honesty and accountability. Two quotes come to mind. One is “Writing is the antidote to confusion“. The other is a quote from Haruki Murakami, “I don’t necessarily write down what I’m thinking; it’s just that as I write I think about things”. Writing is a medium for your stream of consciousness to flow through. So that is what I have been doing.

Now in the aftermath of what has happened, the dust is beginning to settle. Through writing and writing some more, I feel I can share some of the main distilled things I have learnt during this time.

All humans are flawed

Over the years, I watched him struggle on and off with his flaws, his shortcomings, and his own demons. In many ways, I held onto resentment and frustration over those things. I wished he would change for the better, someday in the future. There were times I fantasied that he would become a different person, some sort of perfect version of himself. I naively believed that there would be a redemption narrative arc. Subconsciously, I must have had a mental model that we can all overcome our shortcomings and flaws. That we face adversity and make mistakes, and we can overcome and make things right. That we can right all our wrongs and tie up all our unfinished threads before our time is up.

But it was not to be. His story and journey ended abruptly there. That is the end of the story. This was a big reality check, and my worldview has been fundamentally shifted now. My new worldview (that I am still trying to make sense of) is that all humans are flawed. Flawed in our own individual ways. I realise now that this is an inherent quality of being human. I realise now that we all want to be better and to improve. We do the best with the the tools and resources we are given, and some people just happen to have more than others. In hindsight, I trust he did the best with the tools he had. There is no attainable finish line. We are all walking the same path. We are born an imperfect work-in-progress, and die an imperfect work-in-progress. Now I see the people around me through a different lens than before.

Life is finite

This is the first time experiencing the death of someone close to me. This has fundamentally shifted how I think about time. In my 26 years of life, my default worldview has always been “there is always tomorrow”. Whether it was having that difficult conversation, reaching out to an old friend, mending that relationship, starting that new habit, working on that new project – “there is always tomorrow”. It was as if it was an unquestionable reality of life.

In this case, my internal thought process after another argument or disagreement was – “there is always tomorrow”. Those same problems will be there tomorrow, and the same opportunity to work on fixing those problems will be there tomorrow too. Until I got snapped back to reality, and there is no more tomorrows. The conveyor belt of time that I assumed would be running forever, stopped.

Now I am more conscious of the finite nature of time, and trying to consciously take advantage of the present moment. This is very much a work-in-progress, as I am actively navigating this new head space.

Relationships are (maybe) the most important thing

The most surreal moment was one week after his death. He was cremated and we took the urn to scatter his ashes. We opened the urn and I saw the mound of fine burnt ash inside. It looked like fine grains of grey sand. It was a surreal moment. I thought to myself, “Is that it? Is this what it all amounts to in the end?“. The culmination of his entire life – all his time, memories, experiences, the good moments, the bad moments – and this is all it amounts to in the end?

What really matters in the end then? That you made the most of your time? Did that exam result matter? Did that extra job promotion matter? Did that slightly nicer car matter? Did that extra bit of money matter? Did that person who cut in front of you this morning, leaving you in a huff, matter? It seems like perhaps most these things, like a job or money, are a means to an end, not an end in itself. I think it is easy to get caught up in thinking these things are an end in itself. I do not quite have a satisfactory answer right now for “what matters in the end?”. But the closest answer I have right now is spending time with the people you love, spending time doing the things you love, and enjoying the present moment.