Treasured Timeless Tender Touches, Soft Silent Snowy Stillness, Parents’ Perpetual Peaceful Presence - IMRAN®

Treasured Timeless Tender Touches, Soft Silent Snowy Stillness, Parents’ Perpetual Peaceful Presence - IMRAN®

In every snowfall, a whisper of their warmth. In every silence, the echo of their love. My Ami and Abu.

I hope you’ll read this and be moved to remember yours. To feel the touch of their love again. And maybe, to honor them in your own way.

There are so many touching stories—touching time, touching my life—held within this one photo, I couldn’t possibly fit them all into a short caption.

This selfie was taken as snow gently fell on my blessed Long Island, New York home on December 21, 2024. That same date in 1993 marked the beginning of my search for my first American home by the sea. It had snowed that week too—on Christmas Eve.

My first visit to see the empty lot was also marked by snowfall—on the last day of that year, even in Manhattan. That same “my forever hometown Manhattan” where my precious parents had visited me in mid-1989. 

Abu had gone to Utah State University, while my Ami stayed in New York. The hat I’m wearing—and writing about now in summer 2025—was my Dad’s, from that same summer of 1989.

Ami and I spent several incredible months together in New York—my longest time with her since I left home at age six, to live with her mother, my Nani, in Karachi for a better education. During my winter visits to my parents, it became our ritual in the late Decembers of the 1970s and 1980s to chase the season’s first snowfall in Murree—the timeless hill station nestled in the Pir Panjal range. 

Once a colonial summer retreat for British officers, Murree had become our family’s own sanctuary of winter wonder. Abu would drive us through winding roads and pine-covered hills, touching the cold air and the warm memories that place still holds.

My family was still reeling from losing my mother in 1992, when Abu retired in Pakistan. Later, he visited me at this NY home during a very difficult time in late 1996—the same year I bought the jacket I’m wearing in this photo. (Yes, I remember tiny details, and I take care of the things and mementos I’m blessed to have.)

As I stepped out into the light snowfall to walk K2 on December 21, 2024, I wore that blue cap—a nod to yet another twist of time and dates.

It was still December 21 in 2008 when I called to check on my father. That’s when I was told that Abu, the greatest father ever—who had devoted his life to securing the future of his extended family—had been touched by the hand of death, passing away unexpectedly in Lahore, Pakistan.

Dates, people, things, events, pets—even the snow—all have touched me in this incredible life.

But of all the touches, the ones most missed—and yet constantly felt—are the pats of his loving hands on my cheeks.

© 2024–2025 IMRAN®

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