I completed 4 years without my mother this March and every year I dread the start of the month every year.
In May 2015 she was detected with a malignancy all over her spine while she had gone for a regular check with her Orthopedician. I had just returned from a trip to Turkey and I saw both my dad and mom running to different doctors for a new set of medical checkups that were completely greek to me.
When it was finally declared, she had a malignancy, I remember my aunt(father’s sister) rushing to our home and all of them crying out together in her bedroom. I was 30 then, the eldest in the house yet I was never welcomed in the family grief. My parents would always treat the grief, for my brother and me, like it never existed in our lives. Yet, it was terrifying because I could hear them and it was impossible to not believe what we saw in the movies had just become real.
It has been 4 years now since her departure from our lives but the moments spent with her in her last 1.5 years are still fresh in my mind displaying her saga of bravery that would have been difficult for anyone who knows the shadow of death is near at hand.
People do not like to come out of grief. They feel coming out of it is a betrayal to the one who has gone. Hence, I discovered it is important to grieve but find your own ways to do it. There is no timeline. It is a natural way to heal. I found my healing in the following lessons my mum left me with:-
Life is all about giving and sharing.
When she passed away, I started reading motivational quotes and stories on Instagram. I liked some of them so much that I made a broadcast list on my Whatsapp and started sharing it with my friends. I got a great response.
It was amazing since some of them would thank me saying that they were really looking forward to some words of love, peace light and that when I shared it with them, it was all they needed. I continued doing it and I found while helping others overcome their own life’s challenges, I was overcoming my grief gradually too.
Silence is actually gold.
The colleagues and friends of my mother would throng our home all day in those 2 months and would keep uttering me “Be strong, son”. That would annoy me the most. I would be like of course ! what else do you expect me to be in times like these? However, a friend visited me during that time and I do not know if he did not have any words to say or he did not say anything intentionally, but he came and sat with me on the sofa for like 10 mins and then left without saying anything or having a glass of water. It was the best comfort anybody gave me then.
I know people who may be the best conversationalists but would find it hard to open their mouths to offer condolences. Well, you certainly underestimated the power of silences and the impact they carry
Be scared of your Karma.
My mother had a faint liking for getting her pictures clicked. She was not active on any of the social media but she did like getting clicked. I was not much happy doing it thinking if she was not using it on any of the social platforms what was all the fun doing it. So, I would usually avoid clicking her photographs when she would ask me.
The day she passed away I remember, I was in the process of getting her obituary designed by one of my friends and I realized we needed her photograph. I froze like a fossil. I could not find any of her recent photographs and it hit me hard how true the Karma theory is. With a lot of hustle down some old photographs, I was able to secure one. But , Alas ! what a lesson she taught me while she was gone that I could not learn while she was alive. Life is all about moments. Capture them as much as you can.
You can’t avoid the void
The day she was cremated, the whole house just seemed so empty. I remember emptying the medicines off the side table just next to her side of the bed to not see anything related to her that would remind of her. It all went in vain. It looked emptier all the more. The left side of the bed seemed like challenging me what else are you going to try?
Her cupboard carried her scent every time I would open it. The squeaking sound of the cupboard door while closing would remind of the times when she would be back from her school and close the door before coming to the kitchen. It was like the whole house was in a mourning.
I went into my room only to be beckoned by my father half an hour later telling me to come back in the room and sleep with him as it was his first night in 37 years without mom. It was a blackout for the whole family.
To pacify the gloom in the house, we went for a small renovation in the house and changed the settings around. We accepted the void rather than running away from it and pondering over why she had to go. It helped in keeping dad busier.
No matter how many blocks you move in a line, if one goes missing, you surely can rearrange them to make the line look different. But the void always remains.
Find your chimney
I talked to a lot of friends over the phone and would meet them too. But, after some time I hit a point where I found it too shy to talk to them about it again and again. It was hard for me to cry as I was always surrounded by people and I did not want to use any sympathy card.
So, I wrote a book on the way men felt when they lost their love and yet were never able to express themselves. It serviced me inside out and it gave me an option to be the voice of thousands who were going through the same pain somewhere but had no idea how to deal with it.
Gratitude
I started thanking my mom every single day for all the 30 years she gave me. including the days where she would skip taking her own tiffin to her school because she was busy making it for me and my brother in the mornings. Instead of crying over my loss, I filled my heart with a lot of gratitude and prayed for her soul’s well-being wherever she was. In fact, while she was on her deathbed with the ventilator, I whispered OM (a mantra in Hindu rituals)in her ears, so she could have a perfect ending, given the kind of religious person she was. That night when she could hardly even move her body on her own because of different tubes that were piercing through her, I saw the struggle in her eyes to pat a lid when I asked her to move them if she could hear me. It was not less than a miracle for me to witness it as she was not responsive at all to anyone. It gives me a sense of gratitude for what she did for me then despite all the pain she was passing through.
Be not guilty
I really wanted to share this because every time a person dies in a family, it leaves behind a lot of guilt for the members behind, making them think about what they could have done better. Some of them take it all out on themselves. This is a tricky part of the grief. Realize we will have good days and bad days but let us not over glorify our pain.
Some of us cry a lot. Some of us can hardly even shed a tear. But that does not make us love our lost ones love lesser.
We all have sadness in common yet it looks so different for everyone.
