My father’s quirky idea of a family tree is the reason I miss him most

Growing up, catching a moment with my dad between his multiple jobs and late shifts was like Christmas. The joy from him, and my sisters. I was euphoric. Then he would be gone again in the morning. And yet, I could still smell his gardenias.

In my childhood home, there was a gardenia bush that grew outside my bedroom window. I adored it. The smell, the sign of warmer weather and the approach to Christmas as the flowers bloomed. I was heartbroken when we moved and there wouldn’t be that gardenia bush.

My father, John Habib, with his gardenias. They bring back my childhood, and the fondest memories of my dad.

Until I realised my father had taken a piece of that exact gardenia bush and given it a new life at our new home, to help me feel at ease. And once again, as he went to work and I caught fleeting moments with him, I could smell the gardenia. And it would be Christmas again, soon.

He did the same thing when I moved out into my family home with my husband and children. He took a small piece from the same bush and planted it outside my front door.

My father died a year ago, right before Christmas, just as the gardenia bush was beginning to bloom. Just as the scent was beginning to float through my home. In his final weeks, until his death, I was still catching fleeting moments with my dad, only now they were his interludes of lucidity between the fog of painkillers.

Grief is a strange, wonderful response to a heart-wrenching loss. It sucker-punches you. You don’t think you will ever get up from the physical pain and emptiness you feel. Then a memory or a scent makes you smile and cry at the same time, each tear a reminder of the love you still have for that person.

The gardenia bush that evokes my father’s beautiful life.

Soon after my father died, I drove past my childhood home. The gardenia bush was gone. The house seemed smaller and the street was not as I remembered it. Then, when I got home, I watered our gardenias. The bulbs were on the verge of opening.

That bush began to bloom a few weeks ago, almost exactly a year since Dad left this world – a year since I was so incredibly angry at the world for not stopping, angry that the flowers were still blooming. Exactly a year since I wanted to scream at every person who went about their day as though the world was not emptier for them, too. Couldn’t they see that a profound part of the world was lost? My father.

The anger is still there. Though no longer in the foreground, I am still angry that my children don’t know their jedo – grandpa in Arabic – except through memories and stories I tell them. It has been a year filled with his name and memory being followed with “allah yerhamo”, Arabic for “may God have mercy on his soul”. It’s a saying I asked my mother and relatives to stop using in front of me because I didn’t want every memory of him tinged with his death. But the absence of the saying did not stop every memory of him from being a reminder of the loss.

I am incredibly at peace, however, knowing my father was a part of this world. I am grateful for the family he created, and how he remains central to all our lives. His unconditional love is the blueprint I follow when facing my own parenting challenges.

On the day we commemorated this first long year without my father, the first gardenia bloomed from the bush he had placed next to my door. My daughter, Frankie, spotted it and screamed to me in excitement: “Mum, Jedo’s gardenia, Jedo’s gardenia.” So we picked it, took it to Mum and Dad’s and rested it on his ashes on the mantle. Then we had lunch as a family as the scent from the gardenia filled the room.

Rashell Habib is the head of digital news and strategy at Paramount Australia. https://www.linkedin.com/in/rashell-habib/

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