When someone you love leaves
The other day, while going through some archived footage, I stumbled upon a precious conversation. 82 years old, Padma Sidhesh, who we lovingly call ‘Nani’, was recounting the loss of her late husband. She outlined in great detail that when she was sixty years old her husband succumbed to a cardiac arrest. It was unexpected and shocking. She was visibly devastated. Life had stumped her sense of calm and attempted to rob her of its meaning.
In the days that followed, no matter what people said, nothing consoled her agony and pain. She found the words of every visitor hollow and vain. And felt as if, no one would ever be able to conceive the gravitas of her grief.
But as time passed, after a few months of introspection and bereavement, she woke up one morning with a realisation that her beloved now resided in her. She said, “I was now home to his essence, his philosophy and his story.” From that day on, her hurt did not disappear but morphed into something more healthy and healing.
Nani’s words brought up memory of what I had once heard the author Maya Angelou say in an interview, ‘When someone you love leaves, everyone who has ever left you, leaves all over again.’ I think there is truth in it. It is unimaginable to lose someone you deeply cared for or someone who made you feel special despite your shortcomings. Someone who in this whole wide world of getting lost always found you and helped you get home to their comfort.
But losing the physical person is to have just one way of showing your love back to them shut down. It’s like the telegram service ceased to exist but the post office still operates. And there are multiple ways to communicate. Routes that one must discover to carry forward the love and pass on the cheer.
“Life is pain, highness. Anyone who says differently is selling something”, wrote William Goldman. Our sorrows don’t really leave us nor do they arrive in our days to add torment. They exist, irrespective; from the moment we are born until we breathe our last. Like joy. From time to time one emotion outshines the other in the battlefield of experiences. With this truth we can begin to make some sense of unimaginable suffering.
Perhaps, the thing to remember most is this: Whether you lay the body down under the earth or offer it to the fire, be sure to always bury the spirit of the person in your heart. Be the walking example of their epitaph. Between the railroads of tissue cells and veins, amid the music of your heartbeat and noise of this world, allow them room to settle down.
Be their final place to rest in peace.