Hard Times part 1. Long Trip to China
Hare Krishna, AGTSSGN AGTSP PAMHO!
Dear Gurudev, I hope your body and mind don't cause you too much anxiety and Radha & Krishna always protect your consciousness always fixed on His and Srila Prabhupada's lotus feet.
It was difficult to write before, a week ago we buried my father, I've felt very tired and a little erratic.
The first thing that I Want to say is thank you for the instructions you gave me, I communicated it to my family and we tried to fulfill it as best as possible.
My mother was very accompanied by friends and family, I feel that life has been very cruel to her, she lost her mother, her daughter, her father and now her husband, even so she has remained faithful to her faith in God and feeling that he was merciful to my father by not making him suffer and that he could go away in the dream due to heart failure and not cause of the cancer that afflicted him.
In my case, I had days of deep atheism, of feeling resentment for Krishna and of gratitude for some devotees whom I could trust and who helped and supported me in this difficult time.
Mother Manjuali D D helped me to get remnants of S S G N, Mother Mahanandini and her children offered me their house to honor my father and cook for JBS and share prasadam, Priyasakhi equally as an elder sister with her words of support. Also Kamalaksi Subhadra D D, Kalini Radha DD, SSJPS disciples who are like my family, accompanied us all the time.
Sri Bhakti and his wife Indira Jahnava similarly arranged to send a photograph of my father to Vrindavan Dham. For all of them I ask for their blessings for being there for me.
Since before the trip to Madrid I knew about this situation, at that time the diagnosis wasn't yet conclusive, every day I asked Nrisimha Deva for my father's health, after returning from Mexico, everything began to get complicated, until a day there was nothing else to do.
My father was not a very religious person but he was a believer, he was a normal person, but he never had any problems with me practicing KC, he often donated to be able to cook for festivals, he paid half of the institutional plaque that we put outside the temple, he accepted prasadam and he read some SP books and in those moments when I was not emotionally well he preached to me telling me that I have been devotee for too many years and that this should be my strength in difficult times, he told other people about my religion and that I gave him that spiritual part that was sometimes missing.
HpS/AS - He is, agtSP, going up. He is in the army.
I only hope that Krishna is merciful and allows him to be released soon, because I think that if I could forgive any of his faults, Krishna must also do so.
Sincerely I don't know how I will deal with your departure, it's something that worries me, it's the risks of sharing so much time with the people we love.
(I don't know what the story is about the father going by boat to China, could you comment on it or tell me where to find it?)
HpS - We don't remember where but we heard Prabhupada us that analogy.
It is like 1902 in Santiago. One man has very good opportunity to go to China for his engineering company. He will be gone for three years until a big dam project is finished. At shipside his father and mother, wife, children, brother and nephews are all there.
There are many last good byes. Many tears.
Mother and wife are straightening his tie etc.
Then good bye waving from ship.
Everyone knows that he is not going to cease to exist.
There will be letters that will arrive three weeks after they were written.
There will be very crude telephone calls once every few months, but he will come back.
It is like Krsna enters Dvaraka.
The citizens were just like little children. They were so excited when Krsna returned that they could barely speak properly.
His wife and parents are there. His Uncle, no, he passed away while he was gone.
His children are so dressed up and waiting with flowers and gifts.
He has some gifts to give them directly.
Hand carved panda bear.
So, it is like that.
Person who was your father is not dead.
Is very natural to feel separation but does not mean that there cannot be meetings in dreams.
That we won't meet again when the physical separation caused by being fixed in a material body is finished.
Krsna is your father's best friend, just like He is your best friend.
Krsna is more concerned for his well being at every moment than you and I are.
Hare Krsna.
Preach this to others.
Your Sankirtan gives him enormous benefit.
Greatful for your time, your eternal servant Parasurama Avatar Das, Santiago - Chile.
