Mother's Day

 Yet another Mother's Day without Aai! Last year the wound was very raw. This year there is a hemostasis.That is to say, the wound does not ooze tears constantly. Yet, even now, fourteen months later, i often seem to forget the fatal day. 

Even now, i often feel that she is very much there, may be, in the other room, tops at my brothers' place. This afternoon itself, i was explaining something that I felt Aai, too, must know. No wonder, I wrote to my brothers this morning that she lives on, with/in us.

That makes me think yet again how difficult it must have been for her when Papa passed away. And people were insensitive enough to casually deny to her haldi-kumkum that she was used to for almost forty-five years, a ritual that mattered to her generation.

That reminded me of the many lost during the Covid, without even a proper good-bye, given the pandemic precautions. At least Aai-Papa were lucky enough to be paid the perfect, the proper farewell, often denied to many.

Thus the Mother's Day makes you aware that beyond the market frenzy released by the day, motherliness is this larger feel which understands the woes of others, cares for all those suffering, helps you love plants, pets who cannot even talk to you, makes you take care of mother earth, mother nature. 

Then you realise that though Aai is not with you physically, she is there everywhere, every second, in your every breath. Long live Mother's Day, nay, forever lives Mother's Day.

Pratima@ To the world, you could be a word, 'mother', for us, the word was the world that was forever sunshine, and yet ever created the gentlest shadow for us, however harsh the summer, Aai.