"We must give him a good farewell... a smiling send-off" - Brigadier Lakhwinder Singh Lidder's wife, Geetika Lidder, said this morning as she and her 16-year-old daughter, Aashna, said goodbye to the senior Army officer at Delhi's Brar Square Crematorium.
Mournful visuals showed Mrs Lidder in tears kneeling by the head of her husband's coffin, which was draped with the national flag and decked with flowers. Aashna was by her mother's side, fighting back tears of her own as she let a handful of rose petals fall through her fingers and on to her father's coffin.
"He was larger than life... everybody knows that. You can see how many came to say goodbye. He had a wonderful personality... was loved by everyone," Mrs Lidder, her voice wracked with grief, said.
"I am a soldier's wife..." she said, displaying immeasurable bravery on so harrowing a day.
"There is more sadness than pride... life now is very long but... whatever. If this is what God wants, we will live with this loss. But this is not the way we wanted him back," she said, choking back tears.
"If it was not meant to be... I don't know. But my child will miss him. He was a very good father."
Aashna Lidder, calm and composed in the face of this tragedy, was with her mother at the crematorium in Delhi Cantonment earlier today, where she comforted her mother as she grieved.
"I am going to be 17. So he was with me for 17 years... we will go ahead with happy memories. It's a national loss. My father was a hero, my best friend. Maybe it was destined and better things will come our way. He was my biggest motivator," she said then.
Earlier Defence Minister Rajnath Singh, NSA Ajit Doval and Haryana Chief Minister ML Khattar were among those to pay their respects. A long line of military officials, including the Chiefs of Staff of the Army, Navy and Air Force, also paid tribute, marching in stoic sequence to lay a wreath at his feet.
Brigadier Lidder, 52, was one of the 13 who died in Wednesday's horrific chopper crash in Tamil Nadu's Nilgiri Hills. The crash also claimed the lives of Chief of Defence Staff General Bipin Rawat, his wife, Madhulika Rawat, and nine other Air Force personnel.
There is only one survivor from the chopper crash - Group Captain Varun Singh - is being treated for severe burn injuries at the Air Force's Command Hospital in Bengaluru.
The government has ordered a tri-services inquiry into the crash, investigation of which will begin with the 'black box', or flight data recorders, which was recovered yesterday.
With input from ANI
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