DUMC Stories
O my papa, To me you are so wonderful O my papa, To me you are so good. But after some time, she noticed that I had stopped listening to the song. She wondered whether I could have come to accept the reality of my father’s death and was on the road to emotional recovery. The truth was very different. I had stopped listening to that song because the pain in my heart grew more unbearable each time I listened to the song. Up to this very day, I would tear up upon listening to the song “O my papa.” As the years passed, I grew up and fathered two precious children of my own. As they grew older, I aged too. My son who worked in Melbourne for five years after completing his Master’s degree in Business Administration at the University of Melbourne, gave up a lucrative position as the Strategic Director in the largest digital agency in Australia to return to Malaysia in 2016. He returned because his parents “were getting on in age.” His return was a rushed one as he was wrongly informed that I had dementia. My daughter was sent to the United Kingdom by the Lord to be His missionary there, together with her family. Her calling to serve the Lord there is so evident that her supposedly “one-year stay” looks as though it will be much longer. In the meantime, I came across a song sung by Paul Anka entitled “Papa.” I found myself drawn to it repeatedly after listening to it once. It was like the resurgence of “O my Papa” and almost replaced it. It stirred a deep longing for my late father but, more than that, it somehow also stirred up a longing for my Heavenly Father, who became my “de facto” father after the loss of my father. So, in 2020, these two songs would come very close to echoing Psalm 63 in my life. The words of these two songs may not replace adequately the words in Psalm 63 but the sentiments and emotions stirred up by the two songs do adequately reflect my heat’s cry:
“....My soul thirsts for you My body longs for you in a dry and weary land....” As I pen the words of my reflection, I am reminded of some of us who do not have a father experience that could be, in any way, described as “awesome.” Someone could have gone through the pain of losing a father to illness. Another could have lost a father to another family, while still another could have had a father at home but one that could not relate to him or her as a father to his child. Finally, some could have had fathers that instilled terror, fear and hatred in them rather than peace, love and security. Whether absentee or hated fathers, a deep unfulfilled cry has been created in our hearts: 23
