Dealing with the loss

What could you do differently?

I had been preparing for death long before it arrived.

I don’t know why, but I watched many YouTube videos of funeral pyres burning. I listened to Sadhguru speak about life and death again and again. I felt compelled to understand dying—what it looks like, what it means, how a soul leaves a body. I needed to watch everything related to life and death, as though something inside me already knew.

Each time I fell sick, or each time I believed I was hexed, I thought I was dying. I would pray—always for my family members first. I would pray for my mother, my siblings, everyone. I would place myself last, and sometimes I would not pray for myself at all. My instinct was always to protect others before thinking of my own life.

Then one day, the call came.
We were asked to come and see my father for the last time.
We waited patiently for the doctor. When the doctor finally spoke, he explained my father’s condition clearly and calmly, offering his final thoughts. After listening, my sister—following a suggestion from my sister-in-law—ordered an oxygen tank. When the oxygen arrived, two men came, placed the tube on my father, and left just as quietly as they had entered.

My sister informed my brother and his wife about our father’s condition. Time moved strangely after that—slow and fast at once.
Before 12:59 a.m., the oxygen tank was finished.
At 1:59 a.m., my father took his last breath.
I watched him closely until the very end. I saw how hard he struggled to breathe by watching his throat rise and fall. I kept watching until the movement stopped. I saw his soul leave his body—passing out through his mouth—and then he was gone.

My mother began to cry. My sister cried too.

I stood there, wondering how he managed to breathe until the very end. His legs were bent to the side. His left toe was curled inward. His eyes were slightly open, just a little, as though he had not fully closed them to the world. He was breathing through his mouth, fighting for air until his final moment.

I watched my father suffer until his last breath. My brother and his wife came 20 minutes later and in the end he got to see.

His two roommates could not sleep that night. They sat in the hall, silent, because they too knew that my father was departing from this home, from this life.
Everything after that happened quickly. Arrangements were made without delay.

The funeral was scheduled for the morning. He will be cremated on Saturday.

May he rest in peace.

What could I have done differently?
Nothing.

I would not change a single thing.
The story is as it is.