Reflections of a restless eccentric

When this drastic event happened in my life, I experienced a bunch of emotions. Gradually, I learned to embrace the grief, inhabit the cold realm of despair, and to breathe through the hot waves of pain. But I was unprepared for the loneliness I experienced. Before, I had a bunch of people I was close to. After, I felt like I was the last human being on earth. This made me feel really depressed. What was the point of life if you had to go through your darkest moments alone? Could anyone really be there for you? Or was life a solitary journey from birth to death? Now, don't get me wrong. I'm not saying I didn't have people who tried to support me. I did, and I still do. But very little of their support actually reached me. I felt like there was an insurmountable barrier between them and me, and no words or actions could transcend that. For instance, I would tell a friend what I had been going through, and that person would say something. I'm sure they would mean well. Bu...

A month has made way to a month and a half, and many people have urged me to try and get back to 'normal'. By this, different people mean different things. For some, it means getting back to work fully. For others, it means going out to social gatherings. For many, it means going back to the exact same life I used to lead, and pretending that everything is the same. I, too, logically, have agreed with them, to various extents on these various definitions of normalcy. There is no point in wallowing in the depths of my grief. Crying over what is my sordid reality for the billionth time. I'd rather be doing something useful, something productive, something that cheers me up. And so I have tried, to the best of my ability, to reach this utopian state called normalcy. Walk with me, Reader, on this road of words, as I take you through my journey. It was my birthday a few days ago. My first instinct was to curl up into a ball and not open my eyes. I didn't want a celebration, ...

As I have mentioned in several posts before, my mother has had a long and arduous journey of trauma and grief. Many times, in the middle of a happy occasion, she would start crying. She would rarely want to celebrate, or go on trips. The only thing she found peace in was work. She left early at my wedding, something I couldn't comprehend. I have always attributed all of this to her being a workaholic. Only now, when death stands close to someone I love, I understand how loss breaks you on the inside. Yesterday, on a phone call, I confessed to her that life seemed colorless to me. I couldn't enjoy anything, starting from things as basic as sleep and food. After a night's sleep, I woke up feeling unrested and tormented. Even my favorite food felt tasteless and bland. She told me This is how I've felt for so many years. All those years of unprocessed grief, it adds up. When my brother died at 25, I was still very young, and had just gotten married. I felt compelled to move...

My time in the hospital has been one of the darkest periods of my life. I spent 2 weeks in the corridors of the ICU, and these two weeks that have aged me by a lifetime. One day, my in laws, husband and mother stepped away to have a cup of tea, while I sat there in case we were called. I was sitting on that ratty chair, trying to relax, when suddenly the overhead speaker system came alive. It announced a code blue in the very ICU I was sitting outside of. I froze. Doctors and nurses came running, and the crash cart followed. Finally, the paddles were wheeled in, and by this time I was shivering. There was absolute silence in the corridor, and I knew what every person sitting there was thinking. Which patient is it? My hands were frozen, and I couldn't do anything except think this one thought repeatedly "Let it not be my dad". An hour later, I found that it wasn't him, but that someone else in the ICU had gone into arrest and couldn't be resuscitated. My happiness...

 Right from my school days, I'd always felt worried when I looked at my friends' parents. The worry stemmed from this : My mom and dad were 38 and 45 respectively when I was born. By the time I was in school, my Dad was in his 50s, and my Mom in her late 40s. I couldn't help but notice that my most if not all my friends had parents in their 30s or 40s. I asked myself, What are the consequences of this?  Initially, I saw the more obvious ones: My Dad would retire before even I finished my tenth, a fact he obsessed over and worried far more than I did. Gradually, I started realizing another thing. My parents were no longer in the prime of their lives. Sometimes, this meant lesser energy. Other times, it meant preferring afternoon naps over restaurant lunches. It meant many things. I never resented them for any of this though.  Because I understood where they came from. I understood why they took a decade after their marriage to have a child. They were both from families of ...

 Another year of my life rolls by today, and I return to this yearly ritual, a little afraid. Afraid that I will look deep into my soul, and be unable to find anything to be grateful for. What then? I do not know. I will try though. November clouds my vision with tears, but it also makes me look at the rest of the year in awe. I will channel that awe in writing this. I am grateful for all the time I spent this year with my parents. Grateful for all the Mom cooked food I got to eat. Grateful that I lived close enough to visit whenever I felt like it, at whatever time or day. Grateful for all that I achieved, and for all the happiness that brought to my parents. In October, when I shared that I had been awarded a prestigious fellowship, my Dad was overjoyed. He gave me a gift to remember the day by. On 7th November, when I told him that I had won a prize in a singing competition at my apartment, he told me that he wanted to listen to the song I had sung. On 8th, he asked me what was ...

 After listening to me for a while, my therapist told me: It sounds like you're struggling to accept what happened. The sooner you accept, the easier it will get.  And she was right. Even though it's exactly a month now, I continue to struggle with what happened, and how suddenly it happened. Every morning I wake up, and there are a moments before I remember, and those moments are peaceful.  After that, memory hits me and I feel waves of disbelief, followed by pain and sorrow. The memory of the months before, weeks before, the days before, assail me. After wrestling with trying to forget these days (which is impossible), I have decided to go the opposite way and write about them. So here goes. 2020 has been a generally difficult year, and my parents have been no exception. I saw my dad sink more and more into isolation, and his silences haunted me. Because of all the restrictions and lockdowns, even though I was in the same city, I could not meet them. I tried to call, bu...

 In a recent email to a friend, I wrote that I now have a better handle on things. And I wasn't lying. This arduous journey through my dad's hospitalization and illness started almost a month ago, and by now I have learned how to live with the grief, the sorrow and the exhaustion. I have learned to manage my academic deadlines along with the countless responsibilities and logistics that come with the hospital, my house and my parents' house. So today, I had a neat list full of things to accomplish, including an assignment that was due today. I was feeling rather cheerful, because my Dad had been moved from the ICU to the ward, and my mother and I were dreaming of the day he would be discharged. One week. No, maybe two weeks. By the end of the year, for sure. This was how our conversations went. As I wrote in a previous post, I've felt annoyed when people asked me to hope or to not worry. I have always been a 'what's the worst that could happen?' person, and ...