Dealing with an Absolute

This post is to say I'm thinking a lot about three people right now, close, close family who are dealing with loss and grief... and of a fourth, who is no more. Even for someone like me who usually doesn't have trouble communicating, talking of this is difficult. There's so much to say but when it comes out, it feels seriously inadequate and out of place.

The one good thing is, now, over the last two days, when I've seen him in my mind's eye, I don't see him as he had become in the last few years, I see him as he used to be - all systems intact, raring to go; which is probably the way he wanted to be remembered in any case. I remember him as someone who quoted Russell and Emerson, loved mummy's dahi-bhat and rajma-chawal, and always wanted me to go into the Indian Administrative/Civil Service (to render it a little less Yes-Minister-ish and a lot more functional methinks). I remember little things, like the day he decided he wanted to teach us little cousins, Pink and me, to approximate distances and time. I found it difficult then, at the age of ten anything that looks like more than a handful is "thousands" and the theory of relativity renders anything you're waiting for to happen, to take "simply hours". Now I can do both these things fairly well, but sometimes, when I have estimated time to the minute, I have thought of that first difficult lesson, and of the tough but thorough instructor. I also remember him as probably the only one who could make my cousins stop calling each other "spotted pigs" and "red striped hyenas" (as a part of their daily fights ...I'm serious!) with a single look or word. And then, I remember how he thought I should learn to read, write and speak my mother's native language, and patiently started me off on the vowels one day, and told me he would continue the lesson the next time he met me. And then I remember that fateful "next time", looking on, scared, as he lay quietly on a hospital bed, not responding to anything.

It is difficult to see death, but it is equally difficult to know it has happened and not feel it. It develops in you a sort of numbness, an I-can-handle-it attitude that totally breaks down when you're confronted with the truth in the face. Last year, I went home and for the first time I walked into what was my grandparents' room - and saw my grandfather's empty spot and my grandmother, pale and wasted, bedridden. I had known to expect it all, but they only became 'real' when I was confronted with them. And the delayed response only rendered it all the more painful. Pig just said that what jarred on her yesterday was coming back to the house from the crematorium and seeing his empty bed, the TV switched off, silence. And realization.

For right now, though, I'm wishing for 'bread, butter and Jam' strength for acceptance. I love you and I'm thinking of you all.