Life's Remains....

Change is the only constant in life.  This time last year I was just a father, and now I am also a father-in-law. And, God willing, by the beginning of next year I will be a grandfather. Things have been changing so fast for me that, sometimes, I feel there things in my life I forgot to attend to. And, sometimes I am frustrated that I am helpless to do anything to make things go the way I want it to be. It frustrates me to feel like a victim. I am not a victim. When my firstborn told me that she will be posted to Sabah, my heart sank. The furthest she had been away from me was when she decided that she wanted to rent an apartment in Kajang to be near her workplace, the Kajang Hospital. In my head, then, I tried to find a solution so she can stay at home and commute to work, but the work schedule as a houseman, her odd working hours (I never really got a grasp on it, "on-call" and "post-call" and tagging and clerking... ), we agreed that it is better and safer for he...

Today, my son got married. As relatives and friends congratulated me for gaining a daughter-in-law, my feelings are mixed. But, looking at him sitting on the dais with his new wife, I can't help but felt a loss. Or, more precisely, a feeling of losing him too soon. Suddenly, I felt that I haven't given him all he deserves from a father. I just felt I should have given him more... More love, more advice, more annoying anecdotes about life, more dad jokes. In spite of the brave front that I was showing... I am not sure I was ready to let him go. Not that he's going anywhere... but, I am no longer his sole source of fatherly love, fatherly advice, and fatherly embarrassments. Suddenly, I remember how he liked to push a plastic chair on the front porch when he was a toddler and his laughter at the sound it made. I remember him singing you are my sunshine while pooping when he comes home from kindergarten. I remember him begging us to take him to the beach in Langkawi becaus...