The Pages That Held My Grief.

In September 2014, my father, Ignatius Joran Midzi, went to be with the Lord.

When I look back at the words I wrote during those painful days, I can still feel how shattered I was. I wrote that my heart had been taken out and crushed into pieces. I felt robbed, robbed of more time with my father, of conversations we would never have and of the opportunity for my children to know him properly.

My grief was filled with questions.

Why could he not have waited just two more days for me to arrive? What were his final hours like? Was he frightened? Did he suffer? Could something more have been done? I replayed everything, searching for an answer that might somehow make the loss easier to understand.

There was also regret. I wished I had spent more of my adult years with him. I wished I had travelled sooner, spoken to him one more time and held his hand while telling him that I loved him. Grief made me examine every missed opportunity and blame myself for things I could no longer change.

I was angry and deeply frustrated by the circumstances surrounding his death. I struggled with the thought that his life might have been treated as though it had less value because of a broken healthcare system. Yet, even in my anger, I reminded myself that I could not ultimately judge the condition of his soul. I held onto the hope that, before he died, he had encountered God’s mercy, repented and been received into eternal life.

Those pages show a woman who was broken, overwhelmed and desperately reaching for God. I did not have carefully composed prayers. I simply cried, “Help me, Lord. Hold me. I need You.”

And He did.

My faith did not remove the pain, but it gave the pain somewhere to rest. I clung to Scripture when my own thoughts could no longer carry me. I reminded myself that God was my place of safety, my strength, my rock and my salvation. In the middle of death, I declared that I was still alive in Him.

Looking back now, I understand that my grief was the language of love. I hurt so deeply because I loved my father deeply. The guilt, anger and unanswered questions were all attempts to make sense of a loss that my heart was not ready to accept.

Healing does not mean forgetting him or pretending that the circumstances no longer matter. It means releasing the responsibility for what I could not control. It means forgiving myself for the years I spent away and recognising that distance did not erase love. It means allowing myself to remember my father’s life, not only the pain of his final hours.

Baba, I wish we had been given more time. I wish you had known my children more closely. I wish I could have sat beside you, held your hand and said goodbye. But I entrust every unfinished conversation and every unfulfilled wish to God.

You were my father. You were loved. You mattered. Your life was not worthless.

Although grief changed me, it did not destroy me. God met me in the valley and carried me through it. The woman who wrote those pages felt as though she would never be whole again—but God was already holding every broken piece.

And He has never let me go.