My mother always reminded me, "Everything in their own time." She instilled me that every child is different, every child will find their success in their own time, that they will find their passions and that we need to nurture that.
As I homeschooled my children through high school (after Mom passed away), I continued to hear her whispering in my ear. Her advice helped me to allow my children to travel their educational path at their own pace and to pursue studying what they are passionate about. We were able to do all that in the quiet comfort of our home, which suited my autistic children who also enjoy living a quiet life. They thrived because they were able to do "everything in their own time".
Thanks, Mom. You gave me the best advice that gave me the courage to pull back on conventional learning and the ability to give your grandchildren a wonderful learning experience.
My Dad was a super kind person. Very gentle and giving. I learned so much from him! My mom taught me the importance of humor in life. You never realize what a treasure your parents are until they’re no longer with you. Thank you Susan for sharing this touching post today.
This is so beautiful, Susan. My father was also a doctor and sounds like he had the same excellence practice as your father. My dad was still visiting patients in their homes the day before he was forced into retirement at 84. He had a stroke the following day that took away his job , one of his favourite pastimes, driving, and some of his faculties that never recovered. We did get to have another 8 years with Dad and he discovered the joys of quiet and stillness.
His passion for his patients, and drive to improve the quality of community healthy services continue to linger in my mind. If you're going to do something, do it well and choose to serve others as best you can in the vocation you choose.
Your father sounds a lot like my dad. My dad was once a pipe smoker too, but I don’t remember it when I was young.
One of the greatest gifts my father gave me was the appreciation of quiet and rest. While I inevitably was lured into the false importance of “busyness” and constant productivity, I am now finding my way back to my quiet, restful self. Back to my dad’s true daughter.
Dear Susan, your annual message on your father's death anniversary always fills me with such admiration. What a wonderful man to have had as a father. I know what a privilege this is, because I had a father like this. Here's to all the MENSCH out there.
It is overly long, but in case you ever have time, this was my eulogy to my father (who also died during Covid although not of Covid):
Messages have been coming in from every corner of Nairobi and elsewhere around the world over the past few days. Because so many of us have felt the earth beneath us reverberate gently as this soul has taken his step forward on to a new journey. The week before his death, London was swept by fierce winds. They blew through the trees, making even the strongest ones sway in their music, announcing to us the arrival of the storms. And it is with one sweep of those winds that my father seems to have left.
It reminds me of what he has been teaching me since I was a little girl. That the universe has its ways and its wisdom. That we are only specks here for a minute time in its history. That, if our minds are mired in the mundane, we will never come to understand the immense power from which we come and into which we must all dissolve. That I must think big and be bold. For I too am a daughter of the universe as he was its son.
Dad was a man of many contrasts. A lion of a presence but whose tread was so gentle. A steely lawyer yet a tender father. A man of formidable intellect but who found pleasure in the simplest of things. A person who treated his own pain as minor disturbance but who would melt in compassion at the pain of others. In the end, his stoic nature hid the fact that he was also very fragile. A man of contrasts and complexity. Like the world in which he lived.
It is this contrast that we feel today. So much pain at his leaving and so much joy that he stayed for as long as he did. So much loss and so many memories of what we gained. So much yearning for more time with him yet so much knowledge that we must let him go freely.
We have received message after message from all over the world. Those in the legal profession have spoken about him being a tower of knowledge, compassion and benevolence. That he was the last of that generation of humility in the profession. Clients have called him a man pure at heart and one of the most honourable gentlemen in the profession. Those within the legal fraternity have called him a “lawyers’ lawyer”. A friend has said: “We all will miss Ramesh – he is irreplaceable!” The impact of his loss on the whole Manek family is colossal and we all feel it acutely. His brothers, sisters, nephews, nieces, friends, colleagues, staff and many others will remember for some time to come how he cheered us with his joyful nature, how brutally candid he was and, above all, how he was so generous with his knowledge. Others have had tears in their eyes as they have told me about his charitable work. The few people who really know about his service and generosity to communities of all backgrounds, the poor, the sick, the diseased, the religious, the oppressed, will know that he trod very lightly with his giving. So that nobody would know. So that his giving touched those whom he sought to help but that not even a breath of ego would touch him in return. Often my mother or we would find out completely accidentally about his charitable work. We will never know all that he did. That was his design and, although we want today to celebrate it all, we also must understand the reason for his silence and accept it.
As his daughters, we knew little about his redoubtable character. What we did know is the father who would pluck us up and plop us onto his lap to listen to us to read “Peter and Jane”. Like him, reading became our entry into worlds that only our imaginations can reach, expanses wider than the oceans and the skies. He wanted that for us and gave it to us. The father after whom would we skip across the streets of London to watch musicals, Shakespeare and concerts. The man of adventure who insisted that we dip our heads into the Indian Ocean and slather ourselves with its salts, watch the Spanish flamenco, go to see the Sunflowers by Vincent Van Gogh, listen to the music of Austria, travel to the birth place of Krishna. The father who wanted us to climb mountains that reach towards the sky and, at the same time, ascend to heights within ourselves too. The father who, at bedtimes, would fill us with the wonder of stories from the Ramayan and tales of courage from the Lord of the Rings. The man who would pick bottle brush and frangipani for us to put in our hair and fly kites with us in the Kenyan skies. The family man whose would tell endless strings of jokes and then watch us, waiting for our smiles to light us all up like a line of lamps.
He was a true adventurer. He hitchhiked across Europe in his twenties, worked as a porter in a train station in Paris, lived on an orange farm, put himself through law school in all of eleven months. But he adventured within as well. He came to understand fear and loss and had learned to face it all. He had assured me some time ago that he was not afraid of death. He was so affable with people and by communicating with anyone and everyone, he learned to speak language upon language: English, Swahili, Gujarati, French, German, Spanish and even Kikuyu. He told me to learn languages as well. Said that it was important to be able to understand others and how they thought. And through his own journeys, he came to speak yet another language. The language of the soul.
We spoke that language of the soul in the evenings that we spent together. When I would sit next to him, he on his armchair and I on mine, warmed by the dim light of the lamp behind us and the deep colours of the woods in our home. He would slip grapes to me or nuts from his warm palms. Occasionally his hand would reach over his collection of pipes on the stool between us and his grip would fold firmly over my thin arm. As if telling me that he was there. And during those evenings, he would talk to me of big things. Of what Buddha spoke of. Of the poetry of the Sufis. Of daffodils. Of music and language. Of Krishna and Ram. Of Taoism. Of Shakespeare. Of Islam. And I would grow up to be able to see the thread that weaved through all those moments and those stories – the thread of love, of knowledge, of compassion, of wisdom. I would come to understand that he knew the truth: that the only way to live life is to love life.
To my family, I say today that that same life that he loved continues to run through you. Listen hard and you will hear it in the wind. Stay still on the shores of the ocean and you will feel it in the water brushing at your feet. Open your eyes and you will see it in the eyes of those whom you love. Most of all, let us feel it running through our veins and throbbing in our heart and in the love that we all have for each other.
Finally, from me to my father, I stand tall and proud to be your daughter today. You taught me to see the world. To really look at it. To see the colour of life in every flower and tree and sunset. To look into the eyes of the beggars into whose hands you invariably told us to drop your coins. To value the immense importance of work as being our contribution to ourselves and those around us, even when I was just 8 years old and all I could do was punch a few messy holes into your office papers and have a go at filing them. To walk outside and feel the air on my cheeks and see the leaves swaying against the sky. To love the soaring heights of the music you played for us. To explore, not just the lengths of the world but the depths of my mind. Your biggest and deepest compliment to me was when you told me that I was the kind of mum you would love to have. But I became that only because you taught me, as the Beatles sang, that “All you need is love, love is all you need”. I will not promise that I will follow in your footsteps. I cannot do that. The footprints are too large for my feet. But I will forge my own path, Dad. Because you always accepted me as I am. I remember one of the most basic pieces of advice you gave me: “Just be yourself”. So I will make my own life. I will do my best to make it one of love and happiness and courage.
So, to my dear father, always my father, adios my best friend and guide. I have some pain now but I will not cling. As you said all the time, “Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all”. We don’t know what adventure now awaits you but we hope it will be filled with fun and joy. Thank you for raising me. And, until we meet again, know that I love you and I know that you loved me.
Last words Granny said to me where " You take care of yourself", remember it vividly see her face and I just want to cry, she lived such a hard life, through it all she just kept going while giving her love away, to children and those that needed it... She always said she was either a dollar over or a dollar under, help never came... I stay with her, looking out for her, protecting her, going worth it myself but that what Real Love does, it sticks around no matter how hard it gets and believe me it got hard... Granny save the lives of some kids from monsters, kids nobody wanted. Went through hell behind closed doors, silence cries, giving them at least a shot at life... Never got praise and wasn't looking for any, but their times in life where just can't look away, just can't ignore... Well Granny I'm going to give you some praise Your one of the Great Ones, a True Unsung Hero, Angel, who kept on going for the kids she loved, Thankyou Bruiser...
My dad taught me determination, hard work, to keep on trying and to enjoy life. He was emotionally absent and verbally abusive - a result of his upbringing and a source of much pain and confusion for me. My mum taught me that people who were mean were miserable inside and to not worry about what they did and said. She taught me the value of being ‘there’ for my family and the value of present motherhood as I valued her presence as a stay at home mum when I was young. She taught me to be gentle and quiet around sick people and to not knock their beds. She taught me kindness and sensitivity and she made everything beautiful. We experienced family trauma when I was a teenager and although they are both alive I felt like I lost them after that along with my two siblings. I lost the mum I knew and loved and it has been a grief I have lived with the rest of my life. Thank you Susan, this was such a wonderful question to ponder.
Humility, honesty, hard work, loyalty to my wife, kindness. I learned these things from my father because he modeled them. But best of all he gave me an earthly model of my father in heaven. Some have problems identifying with our Heavenly Father because our earthly father is abusive, angry, distant, unloving, or totally absent. I had none of that baggage from my father.
I love to read about people’s positive relationships with their parents as it reminds me that there is humanity in the world. Your father sounds like he was a wonderful man Susan, very nurturing and encouraging. My relationship with my parents was as far as you can get on the other end of the spectrum. Not many positives come out of a relationship with a bipolar alcoholic father and a narcissistic mother. What they taught me was to never trust anyone, particularly those who are supposed to be your caregivers, and that the only love you are going to get is from yourself.
It made me an incredibly resilient, self reliant and resourceful person, but with certain vulnerabilities. I have been working on the latter for most of my life. It also gave me an acute sense of quickly determining what people are about, who to avoid and who to approach, which comes from hyper-vigilance. Having said that, I do like being part of this community, and hopefully my next post will be about something positive.
My Mom and my Dad were quite amazing parents, and I am forever grateful to them for so much. When I read this entry today one specific piece of advice my Dad gave me had to do with what path I would follow regarding a career/job/work. I quit going to the university after completing my second year, because I was trying to figure out my major. Since I was a small child I dreamed of being a teacher, and I had doubts about finishing at the university and taking that path. So, I talked to my Dad about this. He gave me this advice.
1. Follow your passion.
2. You will figure out the money.
3. And, you'll be working a long time.
These three pieces of advice my Dad gave me is what he modeled over and over in the work he did. I took his advice, went back to school, earned my degree in education and went on to teach for decades. No regrets...and my Dad was right.
I'm having trouble thinking of specific things my parents taught me: come to think of it, they didn't "lecture". I learned from their example, though. Foremost: the quiet, kind, often-unspoken way they had, of caring for each other.
Both my parents taught me, each in their individual way, to love your child to the Nth degree of your existence. That’s how I’ve loved my child.
My mother always reminded me, "Everything in their own time." She instilled me that every child is different, every child will find their success in their own time, that they will find their passions and that we need to nurture that.
As I homeschooled my children through high school (after Mom passed away), I continued to hear her whispering in my ear. Her advice helped me to allow my children to travel their educational path at their own pace and to pursue studying what they are passionate about. We were able to do all that in the quiet comfort of our home, which suited my autistic children who also enjoy living a quiet life. They thrived because they were able to do "everything in their own time".
Thanks, Mom. You gave me the best advice that gave me the courage to pull back on conventional learning and the ability to give your grandchildren a wonderful learning experience.
My Dad was a super kind person. Very gentle and giving. I learned so much from him! My mom taught me the importance of humor in life. You never realize what a treasure your parents are until they’re no longer with you. Thank you Susan for sharing this touching post today.
I’m teaching my granddaughter my love of horses!
This made me cry. So beautiful and simple. Thanks for sharing this, Susan. What a wonderful Dad you had.
This is so beautiful, Susan. My father was also a doctor and sounds like he had the same excellence practice as your father. My dad was still visiting patients in their homes the day before he was forced into retirement at 84. He had a stroke the following day that took away his job , one of his favourite pastimes, driving, and some of his faculties that never recovered. We did get to have another 8 years with Dad and he discovered the joys of quiet and stillness.
His passion for his patients, and drive to improve the quality of community healthy services continue to linger in my mind. If you're going to do something, do it well and choose to serve others as best you can in the vocation you choose.
Hugs to you, Susan, on reflecting on your Dad. x
Kindness and, “it’s only money”.
Your father sounds a lot like my dad. My dad was once a pipe smoker too, but I don’t remember it when I was young.
One of the greatest gifts my father gave me was the appreciation of quiet and rest. While I inevitably was lured into the false importance of “busyness” and constant productivity, I am now finding my way back to my quiet, restful self. Back to my dad’s true daughter.
I loved this essay. Thanks for sharing it.
Dear Susan, your annual message on your father's death anniversary always fills me with such admiration. What a wonderful man to have had as a father. I know what a privilege this is, because I had a father like this. Here's to all the MENSCH out there.
It is overly long, but in case you ever have time, this was my eulogy to my father (who also died during Covid although not of Covid):
Messages have been coming in from every corner of Nairobi and elsewhere around the world over the past few days. Because so many of us have felt the earth beneath us reverberate gently as this soul has taken his step forward on to a new journey. The week before his death, London was swept by fierce winds. They blew through the trees, making even the strongest ones sway in their music, announcing to us the arrival of the storms. And it is with one sweep of those winds that my father seems to have left.
It reminds me of what he has been teaching me since I was a little girl. That the universe has its ways and its wisdom. That we are only specks here for a minute time in its history. That, if our minds are mired in the mundane, we will never come to understand the immense power from which we come and into which we must all dissolve. That I must think big and be bold. For I too am a daughter of the universe as he was its son.
Dad was a man of many contrasts. A lion of a presence but whose tread was so gentle. A steely lawyer yet a tender father. A man of formidable intellect but who found pleasure in the simplest of things. A person who treated his own pain as minor disturbance but who would melt in compassion at the pain of others. In the end, his stoic nature hid the fact that he was also very fragile. A man of contrasts and complexity. Like the world in which he lived.
It is this contrast that we feel today. So much pain at his leaving and so much joy that he stayed for as long as he did. So much loss and so many memories of what we gained. So much yearning for more time with him yet so much knowledge that we must let him go freely.
We have received message after message from all over the world. Those in the legal profession have spoken about him being a tower of knowledge, compassion and benevolence. That he was the last of that generation of humility in the profession. Clients have called him a man pure at heart and one of the most honourable gentlemen in the profession. Those within the legal fraternity have called him a “lawyers’ lawyer”. A friend has said: “We all will miss Ramesh – he is irreplaceable!” The impact of his loss on the whole Manek family is colossal and we all feel it acutely. His brothers, sisters, nephews, nieces, friends, colleagues, staff and many others will remember for some time to come how he cheered us with his joyful nature, how brutally candid he was and, above all, how he was so generous with his knowledge. Others have had tears in their eyes as they have told me about his charitable work. The few people who really know about his service and generosity to communities of all backgrounds, the poor, the sick, the diseased, the religious, the oppressed, will know that he trod very lightly with his giving. So that nobody would know. So that his giving touched those whom he sought to help but that not even a breath of ego would touch him in return. Often my mother or we would find out completely accidentally about his charitable work. We will never know all that he did. That was his design and, although we want today to celebrate it all, we also must understand the reason for his silence and accept it.
As his daughters, we knew little about his redoubtable character. What we did know is the father who would pluck us up and plop us onto his lap to listen to us to read “Peter and Jane”. Like him, reading became our entry into worlds that only our imaginations can reach, expanses wider than the oceans and the skies. He wanted that for us and gave it to us. The father after whom would we skip across the streets of London to watch musicals, Shakespeare and concerts. The man of adventure who insisted that we dip our heads into the Indian Ocean and slather ourselves with its salts, watch the Spanish flamenco, go to see the Sunflowers by Vincent Van Gogh, listen to the music of Austria, travel to the birth place of Krishna. The father who wanted us to climb mountains that reach towards the sky and, at the same time, ascend to heights within ourselves too. The father who, at bedtimes, would fill us with the wonder of stories from the Ramayan and tales of courage from the Lord of the Rings. The man who would pick bottle brush and frangipani for us to put in our hair and fly kites with us in the Kenyan skies. The family man whose would tell endless strings of jokes and then watch us, waiting for our smiles to light us all up like a line of lamps.
He was a true adventurer. He hitchhiked across Europe in his twenties, worked as a porter in a train station in Paris, lived on an orange farm, put himself through law school in all of eleven months. But he adventured within as well. He came to understand fear and loss and had learned to face it all. He had assured me some time ago that he was not afraid of death. He was so affable with people and by communicating with anyone and everyone, he learned to speak language upon language: English, Swahili, Gujarati, French, German, Spanish and even Kikuyu. He told me to learn languages as well. Said that it was important to be able to understand others and how they thought. And through his own journeys, he came to speak yet another language. The language of the soul.
We spoke that language of the soul in the evenings that we spent together. When I would sit next to him, he on his armchair and I on mine, warmed by the dim light of the lamp behind us and the deep colours of the woods in our home. He would slip grapes to me or nuts from his warm palms. Occasionally his hand would reach over his collection of pipes on the stool between us and his grip would fold firmly over my thin arm. As if telling me that he was there. And during those evenings, he would talk to me of big things. Of what Buddha spoke of. Of the poetry of the Sufis. Of daffodils. Of music and language. Of Krishna and Ram. Of Taoism. Of Shakespeare. Of Islam. And I would grow up to be able to see the thread that weaved through all those moments and those stories – the thread of love, of knowledge, of compassion, of wisdom. I would come to understand that he knew the truth: that the only way to live life is to love life.
To my family, I say today that that same life that he loved continues to run through you. Listen hard and you will hear it in the wind. Stay still on the shores of the ocean and you will feel it in the water brushing at your feet. Open your eyes and you will see it in the eyes of those whom you love. Most of all, let us feel it running through our veins and throbbing in our heart and in the love that we all have for each other.
Finally, from me to my father, I stand tall and proud to be your daughter today. You taught me to see the world. To really look at it. To see the colour of life in every flower and tree and sunset. To look into the eyes of the beggars into whose hands you invariably told us to drop your coins. To value the immense importance of work as being our contribution to ourselves and those around us, even when I was just 8 years old and all I could do was punch a few messy holes into your office papers and have a go at filing them. To walk outside and feel the air on my cheeks and see the leaves swaying against the sky. To love the soaring heights of the music you played for us. To explore, not just the lengths of the world but the depths of my mind. Your biggest and deepest compliment to me was when you told me that I was the kind of mum you would love to have. But I became that only because you taught me, as the Beatles sang, that “All you need is love, love is all you need”. I will not promise that I will follow in your footsteps. I cannot do that. The footprints are too large for my feet. But I will forge my own path, Dad. Because you always accepted me as I am. I remember one of the most basic pieces of advice you gave me: “Just be yourself”. So I will make my own life. I will do my best to make it one of love and happiness and courage.
So, to my dear father, always my father, adios my best friend and guide. I have some pain now but I will not cling. As you said all the time, “Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all”. We don’t know what adventure now awaits you but we hope it will be filled with fun and joy. Thank you for raising me. And, until we meet again, know that I love you and I know that you loved me.
Last words Granny said to me where " You take care of yourself", remember it vividly see her face and I just want to cry, she lived such a hard life, through it all she just kept going while giving her love away, to children and those that needed it... She always said she was either a dollar over or a dollar under, help never came... I stay with her, looking out for her, protecting her, going worth it myself but that what Real Love does, it sticks around no matter how hard it gets and believe me it got hard... Granny save the lives of some kids from monsters, kids nobody wanted. Went through hell behind closed doors, silence cries, giving them at least a shot at life... Never got praise and wasn't looking for any, but their times in life where just can't look away, just can't ignore... Well Granny I'm going to give you some praise Your one of the Great Ones, a True Unsung Hero, Angel, who kept on going for the kids she loved, Thankyou Bruiser...
Lovely. Thank you for sharing.
My dad taught me determination, hard work, to keep on trying and to enjoy life. He was emotionally absent and verbally abusive - a result of his upbringing and a source of much pain and confusion for me. My mum taught me that people who were mean were miserable inside and to not worry about what they did and said. She taught me the value of being ‘there’ for my family and the value of present motherhood as I valued her presence as a stay at home mum when I was young. She taught me to be gentle and quiet around sick people and to not knock their beds. She taught me kindness and sensitivity and she made everything beautiful. We experienced family trauma when I was a teenager and although they are both alive I felt like I lost them after that along with my two siblings. I lost the mum I knew and loved and it has been a grief I have lived with the rest of my life. Thank you Susan, this was such a wonderful question to ponder.
Humility, honesty, hard work, loyalty to my wife, kindness. I learned these things from my father because he modeled them. But best of all he gave me an earthly model of my father in heaven. Some have problems identifying with our Heavenly Father because our earthly father is abusive, angry, distant, unloving, or totally absent. I had none of that baggage from my father.
I love to read about people’s positive relationships with their parents as it reminds me that there is humanity in the world. Your father sounds like he was a wonderful man Susan, very nurturing and encouraging. My relationship with my parents was as far as you can get on the other end of the spectrum. Not many positives come out of a relationship with a bipolar alcoholic father and a narcissistic mother. What they taught me was to never trust anyone, particularly those who are supposed to be your caregivers, and that the only love you are going to get is from yourself.
It made me an incredibly resilient, self reliant and resourceful person, but with certain vulnerabilities. I have been working on the latter for most of my life. It also gave me an acute sense of quickly determining what people are about, who to avoid and who to approach, which comes from hyper-vigilance. Having said that, I do like being part of this community, and hopefully my next post will be about something positive.
My Mom and my Dad were quite amazing parents, and I am forever grateful to them for so much. When I read this entry today one specific piece of advice my Dad gave me had to do with what path I would follow regarding a career/job/work. I quit going to the university after completing my second year, because I was trying to figure out my major. Since I was a small child I dreamed of being a teacher, and I had doubts about finishing at the university and taking that path. So, I talked to my Dad about this. He gave me this advice.
1. Follow your passion.
2. You will figure out the money.
3. And, you'll be working a long time.
These three pieces of advice my Dad gave me is what he modeled over and over in the work he did. I took his advice, went back to school, earned my degree in education and went on to teach for decades. No regrets...and my Dad was right.
I'm having trouble thinking of specific things my parents taught me: come to think of it, they didn't "lecture". I learned from their example, though. Foremost: the quiet, kind, often-unspoken way they had, of caring for each other.