A nightmare is just a dream until you wake up

There was sweat on his face as he stood by the car door. It was a hot July after noon in Lahore but the sweat wasn't just from the heat. A fact brought into stark relief by the his inability to stand straight. This is a man who had a titanium plate in his back but still wouldn't use a wheel chair or a walking stick. He stands straight unless he really can't and I didn't reach out to grab him. I always did when he was alive, i always walked a step or two behind him to gently hold him up if the sciatica kicked in stronger than he could control. But in this blasted dream I just kept sitting staring at him sweating from the onset of death. 

And then he crumbled. He fell back. Glowing in the crisp white shalwar kameez for Friday prayers, my father lost consciousness. The sound of his head cracking against the brick drive way still lingers seven hours later. It's what woke me up but kept reverberating. It was abysmally early in the morning but I could not go back to sleep. I stood in the toilet for a good hour or so with my back to the mirror leaning my forehead against the wall because that cracking sound just would not go away. Nor would the sound of my own screams as I sat over him, yelling for him to come back to life, rubbing his palms, knowing full well that he has departed but not willing to believe. He kept on growing smaller. Like a grain of rice being cooked but in reverse. The more I rubbed his palms the smaller he got until his palms were not much more than raisins in my hand and even as I tried to bring him back to life it was that blood curdling crack of his skull against the floor that kept replaying in my head. And then I woke up. Sweat laden and breath deprived, shaking like a wet dog, I woke up and believed it to be a mercy. 

Until I realized that the only thing worse than waking up trembling from a nightmare in which you see your father die is waking up into a reality where he died long ago. 

This is the true cruelty of the human experience: when someone we love dies, it's not the end. It's the beginning of a vicious maelstrom of nostalgia where in we find the elation of having the dead brought back to life only to relive the unbearable agony of them dying again. Its enough to make you want to slit your own throat. If not enough than close enough. Close enough to break your heart into even more pieces.