The death certificate says my dad’s date of death is February 4 because the paramedics declared him deceased after midnight, but when my brother found him unresponsive and hollered for my mum and me to come, it was still February 3. Since we know now that he was gone when my brother found him, the Khans observe February 3 as the day the Khan Family patriarch passed away.
Read MoreToday marks a full decade since my father died. I was 19 and had had a premonition of disaster the entire day, which I naively attributed to something that now seems so mundane and unimportant. My kid brother—who was 16 at the time—found my dad, and he was the one who called 911 and performed CPR while my mother and I stood stunned. My mother insisted on an Islamic funeral, even though my father was a lapsed Muslim, and for up to three days after, our apartment was filled with neighbours, friends and family—some of whom we hadn’t seen or talked to in years, but who had heard through the grapevine of my father’s passing and dropped everything to lend their support. I didn’t cry at all.
Read MoreIn thinking about my dad these past few years I came to the unhappy and disappointing conclusion that I didn’t know him at all. We visited London once when I was about eight and he excitedly showed us his old haunts and babbled on with stories about his time there. I was bored and didn’t listen to a thing he said because I took for granted the fact that he’d be around to re-tell those stories if ever I was interested.