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Marwah Kiani

I search for my father in devastating places. I expect to find him in the leukemia clinic, in the man who survived a widow maker, in the veteran who would mumble to me quietly asking me if he could go home. With my eyes closed outside of these rooms, I waited for Baba’s face to arrive. I braced myself for the deep ache I often feel between the upcurve of my ribs, yet I remained empty, concluded that I was broken, possibly too numb to miss my own father. 

Today, I met my father in Exam Room 4 in Northville. His stature was thinner, not as brooding as Baba. Mischief twinkled in his eye familiarly, perhaps with some exhaustion from the world, also familiarly. He knew what he wanted dash some antibiotics for a budding pneumonia (he guessed) (correctly). He was 90 instead of 66 when I saw him last. Mr. C, let's call him, was much more timid than Baba, but he liked that I spoke to him in Urdu. His eyes crinkled like Baba’s did, and talking to him in a mother tongue felt like walking around the block and finding yourself home.

I look for Baba in angry men, men who are not happy to be in the hospital room, in men who come to us and things are too late. I search for him in the patients who smell of cigarette smoke, who tuck their collared shirts into Levi's jeans stained with paint, who wear too much cologne. Instead, he arrived small and calm. He told me his wife had "left". He laughed, said he knew his time would come too, that our breaths are written, and when we are called home, we must go. “I'm 90, you know. I'm happy with what I've seen. I'm OK with going but until my time, I'll take care of myself.” He shared an Urdu poem with me: “if God calls you one day, what face will you show?"

Mr. C was nothing like my father. He shared poems. He spoke softly. His mustache was half the size. But he was at peace with death much like Baba. Perhaps in 90 years, he's experienced all the love and joy, and heartbreak and fear, and devastation the world has to give him. And maybe he is tired. I used to think that's why Baba let go too. But Mr. C was smiling about death, almost inviting her in for tea, asking her to stay awhile, ready to walk out with her, happy to care of the both of them until the time came to say goodbye. How lucky is Mr. C, to have lived a life he was so at peace leaving? How lucky was Baba, I suppose. 

Grief and death are unknowns of unsettling relief. The only way out is through. The only way to breathe out, is to breathe in. 

“My Baba also left” I wanted to tell Mister C, as he squeezed my fingers. “And you remind me so much of him”