Father Is My Father – A Poem of Love, Loss, and Eternal Longing

In the pen of: Hossain Mohammed Murad Meah

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Introduction

There are wounds the world never sees. There are cries the throat never releases. And there are poems that are not written — they are bled onto the page.

"Father Is My Father" is one such poem.

I, Hossain Mohammed Murad Meah, did not sit down one fine morning and decide to craft a piece of literature. No. This poem arrived at my door the way grief arrives — uninvited, unannounced, and utterly overwhelming. It knocked, and I had no strength to keep it outside. So I opened the door. I opened my chest. And I let the ink flow where the tears had already carved their rivers.

This is not simply a poem about missing a father. This is a declaration — a declaration that no distance, not even the infinite distance between this earth and the hereafter, can sever the bond between a child and the man who gave him life. The title itself carries this defiance: Father Is My Father. Not "was." Is. Always is. Forever is.

If you have ever lost someone who was your entire sky, then you already understand every line before you read it. If you have not, then I pray you hold your loved ones closer tonight — because this poem will remind you how fragile and how sacred that privilege truly is.

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Context of the Poem

Every poem is born from a moment. Let me share the moment that gave birth to this one.

The year was 2021. The month was June. The world outside was recovering from a pandemic that had stolen millions of lives and shattered millions more. But inside my own world, the devastation was far more personal. I was carrying a loss that no vaccine could cure, no lockdown could contain, and no news headline could capture.

My father — my anchor, my compass, my fortress — was no longer beside me in this world.

When I say "no longer beside me," I do not mean he had simply moved to another city or another country. I mean he had moved beyond the veil — that thin, invisible curtain that separates the living from the departed, the seen from the unseen, the temporal from the eternal. He was now in the Lord's own land, as I write in the poem, resting in a place I could not visit, no matter how desperately my soul tried to reach him.

And my mother — my Medina's light, as I call her — she too had departed. The twin pillars of my existence had been removed, and I was left standing in a structure that no longer had a roof, no longer had walls, no longer had a foundation. I was, in every spiritual and emotional sense, an orphan.

Now, I must explain something here. The word "orphan" is heavy in our tradition. In Islam, the care of orphans is one of the most sacred responsibilities. The Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) himself was an orphan, and he elevated the status of orphans to a position of divine concern. When I call myself an orphan in this poem, I am not seeking pity. I am acknowledging a truth. I am standing in the same human vulnerability that connects every soul who has ever lost the people who brought them into this world.

The poem also weaves together deeply personal imagery with spiritual symbolism. My mother is compared to Medina — the city of light, the city of the Prophet, the city of peace and refuge. My heart is compared to the Kaaba — the holiest sanctuary, the place toward which every prayer turns. These are not casual metaphors. They are deliberate. They are declarations of how sacred my parents were to me. My mother was my city of peace. My heart was their holy house. And now that holy house stands quiet, its congregation of two having ascended to a place I cannot yet follow.

The mention of searching for my mother in my daughters and failing to find my father in my son — this is perhaps the rawest confession in the entire poem. We often hear people say, "Your parents live on in your children." And yes, there is truth in that. I watch my girls and I see flashes of their grandmother — a gesture, a smile, a tilt of the head. But when I look at my son, searching for the echo of my father's face, his voice, his quiet strength — I find only the ache of absence. This is not a failure of my son. This is the uniqueness of loss. No one can replace the irreplaceable.

And then there are the questions. The tiny, devastating questions that come from small mouths that do not yet understand the weight of what they are asking:

"Where is our grandfather tonight?"

How do you answer that? How do you explain to a child that their grandfather is everywhere and nowhere at the same time? That he is in the soil and in the sky? That he is in their blood but not in the room? Every time those words reach my ears, a fresh wound opens inside my eye, and the tears rise like a tide that I cannot hold back.

This poem was written on 20th June 2021, just one day before World Father's Day that year. I do not believe that was a coincidence. The universe has a way of placing the pen in your hand at precisely the right moment. The world was preparing to celebrate fathers, and I was preparing to mourn mine. But mourning and celebrating are not opposites — not always. Sometimes, the deepest mourning is the highest celebration. To grieve so profoundly is to prove that the love was equally profound. And so this poem is both — a lament and a tribute, a cry and a prayer, a wound and a healing.

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Summary of the Poem

"Father Is My Father" is an eight-stanza elegy that traces the emotional and spiritual landscape of a son who has lost both his parents.

The poem opens with a gentle but aching longing — the poet wonders about his father's well-being beyond the veil of death, in the realm of blue and gray that separates this life from the next. He acknowledges that his father rests in the Lord's own land, at peace, while the poet himself battles despair on earth.

The second movement of the poem speaks of irreplaceability. No one in this world can fill the void left by the father. The emptiness is constant, the cold is permanent, and the fear of living without that guiding presence never fades.

The poem then enters a deeply spiritual space, comparing the mother to Medina and the heart to the Kaaba. These sacred images elevate the parents from mere human beings to spiritual sanctuaries — places of peace, worship, and divine connection.

The midpoint of the poem delivers the devastating confession of being an orphan — cast into the middle space, suspended between longing and acceptance, between memory and moving forward, between the world of the living and the world of the departed.

The poem's most emotionally piercing moment comes when the poet searches for his parents in his children — finding traces of his mother in his daughters but being unable to locate his father in his son. The grandchildren's innocent question about their grandfather shatters whatever composure the poet has maintained.

The poem concludes with a prayer — humble, desperate, and beautiful. The poet asks the Lord to keep both parents in Heaven's gardens, to hold his orphaned hand, and to ease the sorrow that he carries. It is a prayer that transcends religion, culture, and language. It is the universal cry of every child who has ever looked up at the sky and whispered, "I miss you."

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The Poem

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Conclusion

Some poems are written to be read. Others are written to be felt. And then there are those rare poems that are written to be lived — poems that do not merely describe an experience but become the experience itself, pulling the reader into the poet's chest and making them breathe with his lungs, ache with his heart, and weep with his eyes.

"Father Is My Father" belongs to this rarest category.

When I wrote this poem, I was not thinking about literary devices or rhyme schemes or syllable counts. I was thinking about my father. I was thinking about his hands — the hands that held me when I was too small to walk, the hands that guided me when I was too confused to choose a direction, the hands that blessed me when I left home, and the hands that I held one final time before the earth claimed him. I was thinking about those hands, and the ink moved on its own.

I was thinking about my mother — the woman who was not just a mother but an entire city of peace, an entire Medina of warmth and light and unconditional love. When she left, the light did not merely dim. It relocated. It moved from this world to the next, and I was left navigating the darkness with nothing but memory as my lantern.

And I was thinking about my children — those beautiful, innocent souls who carry fragments of their grandparents in their DNA, in their laughter, in the way they tilt their heads when they are curious. My daughters, in whom I catch sudden, breathtaking glimpses of their grandmother. My son, in whom I search — endlessly, desperately — for the reflection of my father, only to find that some reflections cannot be replicated. They can only be remembered.

This poem is my offering to every son and daughter who knows the weight of the word "orphan." Not the dictionary definition — the lived definition. The definition that sits on your chest at three in the morning when the house is silent and your mind is loud. The definition that strikes you in the middle of a celebration when you turn to share a moment with someone who is no longer in the room. The definition that makes you dial a phone number that no longer connects, simply because your fingers have not yet accepted what your mind already knows.

To my father, I say: You are my father. You were my father. You will always be my father. The title does not expire. The bond does not dissolve. The love does not diminish. If anything, it grows — it grows the way trees grow after a storm, deeper into the earth, reaching further into the soil, anchoring itself more firmly into the ground of my soul.

To my mother, I say: You are Medina. You are light. You are the gentleness that I carry into every harsh day. When the world is unkind, I close my eyes and I am a child again, sitting beside you, listening to your voice, and everything — everything — is alright.

To my Lord, I say: Keep them. Keep them in Your gardens. Keep them under Your shade. And when the time comes — when my own veil lifts and my own journey across the middle space begins — let me find them there. Let me hear my father's voice again. Let me see my mother's smile again. Let this orphan come home.

And to you, dear reader, I say: If your parents are still with you, go to them. Go now. Do not wait for a poem to remind you. Do not wait for a loss to teach you. Go to them, hold their hands, kiss their foreheads, and thank the Lord that they are still on this side of the veil. Because one day — and that day comes to everyone — you will understand why I wrote this poem. And on that day, I hope these words bring you even a small measure of comfort, a small reminder that you are not alone in your grief, and a small prayer that echoes your own.

Father is my father. Today. Tomorrow. Forever.
And that is all this poem ever needed to say.

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Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

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