You too dad?

My dad’s unwell, he’s been suffering from severe bronchial asthma for the past 20 years and it usually aggravates in winters. This time, it’s quite serious, nebulizers, steroids, antibiotics etc etc are not leading to instantaneous recovery that they normally lead to. Since he’d been coughing a lot due to overproduction of sputum, I reckoned his chest and back muscles would’ve been quite fatigued. So I decided to give him a massage. This is where the image of my father being strong and muscular (like he used to be) got erased. Dad’s nowhere near as muscular as he used to be, he looked frail. As I massaged daddy’s back I felt really sad, he’s not as strong now is he!! His arms are “relatively” strong (nowhere near what they used to be). I remember my father’s big biceps, he used to flex them and show me when I was young and I used to wonder if mine would ever grow that big. His wrist is still bigger than mine, his fingers much broader than mine. Actually the shape of my fingers resembles my ma’s than my dad’s. In fact while massaging him, I was cautious that if I applied too much pressure, for it felt that I might hurt him…how weird is that, my dad was strong, nothing could hurt my dad, I remember pushing him as a teenager and what a mountain he felt like, I could never match his strength. I remember seeing him after a bloody accident and he was still smiling and telling us not to worry. I’ve known him as the most stubborn as well as tenacious and hard-working person, how can he be weak?? When I was done giving him a massage, I was very sad indeed to realize that my dad had grown old. Then he uttered a feeble “thank you”…boy oh boy, that did it…I ran to my room and cried like a baby. I picked up one of his recent photos and one of the old ones and realized how old he’d grown. I also realized that his present face is not the face that comes to my mind when I recall it.

When we have disagreements, we still fight them out. We’re rude to each other and sometimes don’t talk for days…then start conversing on something casual and pretend nothing ever happened. I’m nasty to him sometimes (well he still fights like he used to)…for I still feel that if I ever try pushing him…he wouldn’t budge and would throw me a couple of feet away with one shove of his hand…for he’s still that mountain to me. Well it’s not like that now is it, and this makes me so sad!