Strokeversary: Musings on a difficult year

It has been a year since the day of my father's stroke. A year that feels like a lifetime. A lifetime of pain, worry and grief. As a habitual overthinker, I wonder, apart from being on this insane emotional roller-coaster, is there anything that I have learnt from all this? Anything I can say that might be remotely helpful to someone else navigating choppy waters? And that's how I ended up writing this.

When something goes awry in a big way, it is natural to feel sad, worried or afraid. There is nothing wrong with this, and it is perfectly fine to feel these emotions. 

But what I think is completely avoidable is the struggles that come out of our ideas of fairness and how our lives should play out. For a long time, I have known that life is not fair. Consciously, I'd never even expected life to be fair to me. But I've spent many a day in misery because somehow, I still felt angry and betrayed and upset. For instance, I'd feel very triggered when I met relatives or friends who were either my peers or my parents' peers. I'd feel that they were so lucky that their lives were "normal" and that mine was so broken. Even simple things like seeing someone walking or laughing or having a meal peacefully disturbed me severely. These were such small things that everyone else took for granted but were so difficult for my family. Why did life have to be like this? After a while, I realized that I could not compare anyone's life with mine. I only saw a small portion of their life, what they chose to expose to me. I had no idea of their struggles. Even if they sat down and told me, I couldn’t truly understand their woes or inhabit their world. What, then, was the point in such comparisons? Even if such a comparison was possible on some plane and my lot in life turned out to be worse, what then? It is not something I can control or change, no matter how much I try. So why bother? 

The other thing I did was to compare this version of a future I had in my head with reality, and undoubtedly reality fell awfully short. For instance, in my imaginary future, my dad would have visited me many times and spent a lot of meaningful time with me. Reality was that he would most likely never be able to walk again, and I would mostly never see him at my doorstep. The gap between these two was all that I'd lost, and I grieved deeply for it. Obviously, there were many such dreams that would never see the light of day, both big and small, and therefore my loss that much larger. But a while later, I realized that this was not a good baseline for comparison. In fact, there can be no baseline for comparison. There is no way to say that my "projected reality" would have ever come true, even if my Dad had remained perfectly healthy. There could be a million changes that permanently altered life's trajectory. And just like every other mortal, I had very little control over any of this. Why then, did I put myself through so much? Why couldn't I simply inhabit the present moment?

And lastly, I wanted to do something to help my parents. But many times, there was nothing I could do, either because the situation was that way, or because they were not ready to accept help in the form I was ready to provide. This unleashed upon me waves of guilt and helplessness. How could I live with myself if I was not able to help the most important people in my life in their time of need? I felt horrible and continually struggled with feelings of worthlessness. I took on my parents' pain as my own, and felt responsible to solve their problems. This only increased my burdens, and made me feel even more overwhelmed. Eventually, I came to this very painful but cathartic realization- I could not help someone who did not want to accept my help, no matter how close they were to me. I could not take on people's problems as my own. 

In summary, these ideas of fairness and justice in life caused me to lose even more. I was unable to feel happy even when things did go well, because these thoughts were always in my head, like a dark cloud. I cut off contact with many people, because just meeting/talking to them was enough to send me spiraling into grief. I am by no means perfect, and I still struggle with all of these things many times. But these days, I hear another rational voice in my head. Every time I draw a parallel to another's life and compare or ponder upon what would have been, I realize that I'm only being unfair to myself. I end this with these poignant lines from Four Quartets.

Time present and time past
Are both perhaps present in time future,
And time future contained in time past.
If all time is eternally present
All time is unredeemable.
What might have been is an abstraction
Remaining a perpetual possibility
Only in a world of speculation.
What might have been and what has been
Point to one end, which is always present.
Footfalls echo in the memory
Down the passage which we did not take
Towards the door we never opened
Into the rose-garden. My words echo
Thus, in your mind. But to what purpose
Disturbing the dust on a bowl of rose-leaves
I do not know.

-T.S Eliot