Bipin’s Story

My first real experience of grief came when I lost my Dad.

It was Easter time in 1992 when we learned he had suffered a stroke. I went to visit him at his flat. I can still see the room now. Quiet. Heavy. The curtains half drawn against the afternoon light.

Dad was lying in bed looking pale and exhausted. He motioned for me to come closer. I leaned in, expecting him to ask for water or medicine, but instead he looked directly at me and said softly, “I want you to take care of everyone from now on.”

At the time, I simply nodded.

I do not think I truly understood the weight of those words.

Within minutes he was rushed back to hospital after suffering more strokes. Those were the last words he ever spoke to me.

For years afterwards, grief meant shock to me. The disbelief that someone who had always seemed strong could suddenly disappear from your world. But as I grew older, grief became something deeper.

It became regret.

Not regret for anything cruel or terrible. Regret for not asking more questions. For not understanding the burdens my father carried. He had lost his own dad at a young age and had known hardship long before I was born. I was a sickly child with severe asthma. Money was tight. Medical bills must have weighed heavily on him, yet as a child I never saw any of it.

Children rarely do.

Looking back now, my heart aches when I think about what life must have been like for him. The pressure. The worry. The quiet sacrifices that parents make without announcing them to the world.

Then grief visited me again when my mum became seriously ill a few years later.

She was in hospital and struggling badly. Her heart was failing. I went to see her with my wife. As I turned the corner and saw her lying there, my heart skipped. She looked so thin and pale. Tubes ran beneath her nose as she fought for each breath.

She called me closer.

In a weak voice she said, “I want you to stop fighting for me and let me go. Look after everyone.”

Then she removed a small pendant of our God from around her neck and handed it to me.

I remember making an excuse to leave the room for a moment, but really I went to a small garden nearby and cried alone. Inside the room, my wife sat beside my mum singing bhajans softly to comfort her.

Not long afterwards, she passed away.

As I look back on it now, I realise they left behind a legacy to be proud of.

Not money or possessions.

Something far greater.

Strength. Sacrifice. Family. Duty. Love.

The older I get, the more I understand the weight they carried so quietly.

Grief still comes and goes. Sometimes unexpectedly. A memory. A smell. A song. A passing thought when the world has gone quiet.

But through it all, I remember that a promise was made.

“Look after everyone.”

I have tried my very best to keep it.

That, more than anything, is what grief means to me.

By Bipin J.