Writing through grief

On how I wrote letters to my dead father to deal with death, regrets and grief.

"You should come back," my cousin wrote after meeting the doctor at the hospital. My dad, who had congenital heart disease, was now lying in the Cardiac Intensive Care Unit (CICU). 

I packed my luggage and took my seven-month-old baby with me on the flight the following day, leaving my 3.5-year-old son behind with his dad. It would be the second time I'd be away from him; the first was for four days after giving birth to his little sister and staying back because of her jaundice.

On the plane, I braced myself for the worst. We were told after my dad’s last operation almost ten years ago that it would be his last, as it is rare for anyone to undergo more than three open-heart surgeries, especially not at his age.