Parallel Worlds and me

Fifteen years have passed since my father's death, yet the impact of his suffering remains etched in my mind as if it were yesterday. His life was marked by hardship, beginning with a strict and demanding father who shaped much of his early years. My father spent his entire life working tirelessly for his family. He was a complex man-sensitive, yet often intolerant, with a choleric temperament that could flare up unexpectedly. One of the things that pained me most as a physician was his heavy smoking habit. Despite my constant pleas, it wasn't until my younger brother, at just five years old, persistently begged him to quit that he finally gave it up. However, giving up smoking seemed to have taken a toll on him, making him more sensitive and nervous than before.

My parents, despite their deep love for each other, often found themselves entangled in absurd arguments. They cared for each other deeply but struggled to express their love openly. In the last five years of his life, my father faced a devastating blow that changed him forever. Due to a betrayal by one of my uncles, who had registered my father's name as the manager of a fraudulent company, my father was banned from traveling abroad. This event shattered his spirit. Although I eventually resolved the issue through legal means, the damage was done. The once energetic and active man I knew became withdrawn and inactive, burdened by the weight of what had happened.

As time went on, I began to notice subtle signs of change in him. He would forget things, repeating old stories to guests with an unsettling frequency. At first, I didn't want to acknowledge that this might be the beginning of Alzheimer's. But as the disease gradually took hold, it became impossible to ignore. We eventually had to stop him from driving, yet he somehow managed to find the car keys and drive off on errands. One time, he disappeared for two days. My brother and I were in Tehran at the time, and it was a frantic period of uncertainty until we received a call from an unfamiliar voice. "Don't worry, your father is here and in good health," the voice reassured us, but he had been in an accident in a distant rural area. The car had to be towed back by a truck, and after that incident, his memory continued to deteriorate.

The decline became painfully apparent one night when my mother called me, panic in her voice, telling me that my father had fallen while getting out of bed. When I arrived at their house, I found that he had broken his femur. We rushed him to the hospital, and after the operation, he never walked again. The physiotherapy, instead of helping, seemed to worsen his condition. Day by day, he grew weaker, eating less, and gradually losing touch with reality. His memory flickered in and out, and there were moments when he didn't recognize me at all.

We had to admit him to the hospital once again, and after a week of agonizing suffering, he passed away. The pain of his loss was profound, but even in death, he never left me. He remains a constant presence in my dreams, always sick, always on the brink of being lost, and I wake each time with the crushing realization that he is no longer with us.

In one of our last conversations, as I brought him to his orthopedic appointment, he looked at me, eyes clouded with the weight of his suffering, and said, "The human being is nothing." Those words have haunted me ever since, echoing in my mind as a stark reminder of the fragility and transient nature of life. His death may have taken him from this world, but the shadow of his suffering lingers on, a constant companion in my dreams, and a reminder that some losses are too deep to ever truly fade away.