When someone very close to you passes away, and right in front of your eyes, it shakes you up from within. Well, you know perfectly well that one day you yourself are going to die, too. Death is inevitable for sure. There are people who advise you that it is better that a person dies instead of suffering hugely. Some of them mean extremely well, too. Yet your heart is not ready to accept what your brain tells you.
Well, when the dead body is being taken away for cremation, apparently you are supposed to say "punragamnay", it seems. It means "return/come back". What exactly is the big deal? Even if the person were to be born again, he/she would never be the same one whom you knew, whom you loved deeply your own way, though you may not have been able to make a huge show and a big exhibition of it. Neither may you ever howl and holler in public. Often, in this show-off world of ours, the amount of tears you shed in public are supposed to be the measure of your care and concern!
There are others, once again a few amongst them care for you deeply, who advise you to let go of the departed. The deceased, it seems, feel wretched (and irritated) because of your grief. Their happy future is marred by your mourning is the suggestion. Obviously, the kind ones amongst such advices are actually for YOUR well-being.
You understand that. You feel their concern. Yet the heart has its own reasons the head or the world knows nothing of. You carry on with life. The intensity of the grief is equally heart-wrenching. Yet the bouts take longer to return. The scab starts getting thicker and drier. When you worry the wound, the gash does lacerate, bleeds. You sure struggle, and bounce back to normalcy from all symptoms of depression.
Life goes on. The sun rises, the moon sets, some flowers bloom, some trees wither away, birds chirp the same way every morning, the strays howl the same chorus every night.
Yet after every loss, your heart is like the lunar surface, full of a huge pothole that no amount of cementing can fill or smoothen out. Memories rush in like the mad sea waves drunk on the monsoon winds. The mindscape then belongs yet again to desolation. And memories! Memories never wither with time. Well-fortified they are against that mugger!
Pratima@ On May 18, to commemorate their wedding anniversary, I did get the eggless cake for a simple celebration as I used to. Empty rituals! They cannot bring back those lost forever. But sure they usher in memories that burst like summer showers!
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