I Wonder

I wonder, if it was me instead, how much would you have grieved me? Would you have buckled your belt, tied your shoe laces and gone to work with a distraught toddler at home? How much would you have cried, vented and been angry with the world, if I had died instead of you? 

Would you have continued living like nothing happened? Would you even have had the time to grieve me to begin with it, what with your meteorical rise up the corporate ladder.

How would you have answered our baby's  dozen questions about my death, ranging from, "Why didn't mama take me with her to God?", "Will mama jump into our house from the stars?", "When I die, will I see mama again and be happy?", "Did mama disappear?"

It must be so easy being a soul. All you have to do, is appear in a few bizzarre dreams once in a while and just vanish again, to do whatever it is that you do in heaven. 

I miss you everytime I read a filthy joke on Instagram. Would you have missed me too, each time you saw Theobroma posting about their latest dessert?

I'm only left with a lifetime of wondering now. I wonder, how long would you have grieved me? I wonder, why you made terrible decisions completely disregarding our 3 year old?

You really are one lucky guy aren't you, both dead and alive. We always had your back, your son and I. Even in our anger and disappointment, we have nothing but love for you. What a shame it is, that you won't get to experience any of it. 

You're not resting in peace. I can say this with absolute certainty, not just as your wife, but as the person who doused you with ghee, pushed you into the fire, immersed your ashes in an obscure holy tank and sat for six bone crushing hours, on the floor, chanting mantras in a language I've never spoken in my life. So no, you're not resting in peace, because I will never be at peace. 

Closure

There is no such thing as closure when your seemingly healthy spouse, abruptly passes away on a Monday evening. The sight of his motionless body haunts you for the rest of your life. And if I were a soul like him, I doubt I would be resting in peace. Looking back, on that terrible evening when the Earth split under my feet, I realise, I not only had to deal with the trauma of my soulmate dying, I had to deal with the most intrusive and insensitive comments from his own "well-wishers".

Someone asked, “Who will take care of you now Gayatri?” and “Oh, I wanted to tell you in the crematorium, rubbing fluids off a dead body is fatal, you shouldn’t have done it”. In the trauma of the moment, I stared back blankly at him with no response in place. Today, close to five months of living as a widow, I would like to reply to him, “No one has taken care of me, since I was 21 because I’m not a child” and “The person lying on that shabby cemented bench was not a dead body, that was my husband. The fluids flowing out of his nose would have been irritating for him, along with the flies that clustered around his face”.

My only suggestion to such insensitive, self righteous, pompous buffoons is, please allow the griever to grieve in peace. You will never understand the depth or rawness of the pain experienced by the griever, simply because your loved one is standing right next to you, in flesh and blood. You don’t have a lifetime of decision making and living to do, without the love of your life. The least, I repeat, the very least you can do is be quiet. No one wants your opinions and no one wants to answer your ridiculous, inconsequential questions.

Everything a griever does for the rest of their lives is merely an excellent distraction to stop feeling cut-up, hurt and distraught. Our smiles are merely a beautiful, false mask we don for the world to see. We change and morph into a different being, because what other choice do we have? Do we ever forget or stop loving our soulmate in heaven? Never. Not for one millisecond.

My poopie shouldn’t have died. But since he has, I’ve died with him too. I’m somebody else now. Somebody who has no interest to put up pretences. I loved only him, not the white noise that surrounded him. I respected only him, not the “well wishers”, I was forced to put up with, as long as he was alive. 

I pray no wife, mother and son, have to go through the trauma that we did. Only we understand our pain, so stop judging, stop preaching and stop making small talk with us. 

What Next?

Once the initial hysteria of death wears off, you're left with oceans and oceans of time. You begin to wonder, "What now?" For starters, you realize, convincing your toddler that you can don the role of two parents, was not such a good idea afterall. 

The pangs of loneliness really begin to hit you now. Every aeroplane that whizzes by, leaves you feeling sick, right upto the pit of your stomach. Suddenly, your parents have a much more active social life than you. 

Your toddler is still wondering, if his Baba will ever come back. Which makes you wonder, where is Baba right this very moment. Has he taken rebirth? Is he a higher all knowing soul? Has he chosen to be your guardian angel to watch over you? 

You're not interested in small talk anymore. You don't want to be anyone's shoulders to cry on, because you have tears as volumnous as the Ganges inside you, which you've just adamantly held back. 

Your entire relationship flashes in your head,  right from the courtship days to when you got married to when you held your child together, for the very first time. We had it all figured out, or we thought we did.

There is no end to sadness. There is no "moving on" from love. There is only a whole lifetime of wondering, why the person you thought you knew so well, made some very bad life choices.

I can probably walk into Starbucks today, grab a lamb taco from Clearing House and chow down an entire plate of juicy grilled chicken with roasted potatoes and pesto sauce from Mia Cucina, without feeling blue. However, the romantic fool in me, would be hoping beyond hope, to catch one tiny glimpse, of my dear poopie, sitting on one of those tables, with a glass of red wine, Americano or a freshly brewed pint of exotic beer in hand.

"I miss you", would be such an understatement. I have no answers to give our son, each time he enquires about his father. What am I supposed to tell him, each time he asks, "Will Baba come back?", "Why didn't Baba take us with him?", and "Did Baba enter stars through a door?"

Are we supposed to continue our long distance relationship? Only this time, I have no idea whether my feelings are being reciprocated because I can't see, feel or talk to my partner anymore. 

How exactly am I supposed to let go? 

The Bereaved

I wonder what sucks more. Being dead or being in the shoes of the bereaved. I'm going to choose the latter, for obvious reasons. Talking about my 35 year old deceased spouse is both a comforting and unpleasant experience.

There is no "moving on", from something as life changing as that. So thank you, to the friends who call every week to check in on my cuckoo quotient (yes, I'm talking about you, Kiron and Ritesh) and thank you dear close friend of poopie's who I've met for all of ten minutes in eight years (not sure you want to be named) who made the effort to fly down from Bombay to Chennai, during his visit from the U.S. 

I wish the circumstances were better, for all of us to have bonded or met. I still can't believe poopie is no more. I wake up most mornings, day dreaming he's alive and will be home over the weekend. 

A little over four months since he passed away and I still strongly believe, it wasn't his time to go. Yes, he was super stressed with work, he couldn't say "no" to people and he hardly slept. However, all these factors, are still not reason enough for a 35 year old man, with a less than 3 year old son to have died. 

He wanted to live and drive an environment polluting, diesel S.U.V while he breathed and sold renewable energy at work. He still had half a dozen disgusting jokes in him, which potentially could have had him fired. He wanted to take a week off, for our 8th wedding anniversary and he promised, he would decrease his work travel, in 2022. 

If I'm being honest with myself, he wouldn't have lived up to that last promise. He was a smooth talker that one, a little over 11 years of being a management consultant, does that to you, I suppose. 

We all miss you poopie. We miss you in the awkward silences and the inane chatter. You did have some beautiful friends and I see that now. 

How lovely it would have been, if I could wake up tomorrow and live in a world where you would still be alive. Alas, my hands and eyes have done and seen too much, to bid adieu to your gorgeous physical frame, to know that this wish of mine, can never come true. Not in this birth anyway. 

Until we meet again, my dearest poopie. And I know, we will. 

Is This Goodbye, Yet Again?

There are so many ways to say goodbye to a person, starting with pushing them into the fire, sprinkling their ashes into a tank, performing their 11th day puja and now thanks to social media, memorializing their accounts.

How many more times am I supposed to say goodbye to my 35 year old spouse? What if I don't want to? What if I'm still in shock and disbelief over his death? What if I'm convinced that it wasn't his time to go?

While I don't have the answers to any of these questions, what I do know for sure, is that I have very large shoes to fill. I have a toddler who tells me every week, "I want to be you, when I grow up maamaa". His undying confidence in me, gives me the strength to hold back my tears and numb the pain. 

I'm no longer filled with a roaring, flammable rage of grief, it has been replaced with a quiet melancholic acceptance. I comprehend and understand that my husband is never coming back home. No one will call me "poopie", ever again. And I am just maamaa. I don't need to be Baba. I am enough for my child. 

That being said, can Riaan and I truly move on from poopie's death? Probably not. School forms and college applications, will constantly remind us, that we had a poopie and a Baba in our lives, who passed away abruptly. 

If there's anything to learn from his short yet memorable time on Earth, it is to prioritise yourself, ALWAYS. Nothing and no one who hampers your peace of mind is worth it. And if you want to redecorate your balcony or buy a new coffee table, just do it. Don't talk about it senselessly for six months until you die. 

Did he live life on his own terms? I really dont know. 

Feeling Normal

What is normalcy, after the death of your 35 year old spouse? Is it finding inner peace? Is it talking to your toddler everyday about his dead father, reassuring him, that he was madly in love with him? Is it coming to terms with the fact that you will always feel a little incomplete? Bingo!

You WILL feel incomplete and empty, forever. However, you will learn to live with the emptiness. Kind friends will check in on you, once a week, while the ones who got over the initial shock of a 35 year old man dying, would have long gone. 

Dying for the departed, is probably not as painful in comparison to the ones who got left behind. While they're probably floating in heaven with a pint of freshly brewed beer and lamb tacos, we're left to deal with the "grief hijackers" and the "friendly well wishers".

Most people don't know, how to react in a situation like this. I get that, completely. But, I'm greiving, not brain dead. I don't need unsolicited advice on how to raise my child or how scared you feel about your partner dying, just because mine is dead. This loss is mine and mine alone, allow me to experience my heart being ripped in two.

I'm not sure I can ever really "move on", because we never got to say goodbye to each other. Was there something other than stuffing his face with green smoothies, doctor's appointments, forcing him to exercise and giving him grief over his soul sucking job, that I could have done, to have made him live longer? 

Why did he not prioritize his health? Why were people's opinions about him, so important to him? Why didn't he spend more time at home, when he claimed he deeply missed us during his work travels?

I'll always have a million questions for him, the biggest one being, "How dare you die on me?"

Was our life together not good enough for him? Was the call of God so tempting, that he gave in without a fight? 

I don't want to miss him anymore. But there's an adamant and persistent, dull ache right in the middle of my chest, that refuses to go away. 

Home

Four months and two days since we've spoken to each other. The silence is deafening and the loneliness is heartbreaking. It hits me in waves - your big toothy grin, your spontaneous "long drive" plans and the sight of you slumped into our blue sofa with a glass of whiskey in hand. 

"It's good to be back home", was always the first sentence you told me, the minute you landed in Bombay. You were my home, for 14 beautiful years. Not four walls and the innumerable curios we handpicked from around the globe. 

With you gone, I feel like a kite without it's strings and a building without it's strong foundation. I'm happiest on the days I'm so busy, I have no time to think. I'm ecstatic, when my legs hurt from over-walking and my back feels like it's been hit by a sledge hammer. 

The reality of never being able to hug you ever  again for as long as I shall live, hits me when I least expect it. Like right now, all I want, is for you to hug me and take me on a nice long drive. I miss you, so much. 

But life has ruthlessly gone on and that's the bitter truth. Ever since you left, strength hasn't been an option or a choice. It has become a part of me. I had to rise-up, restart and at least attempt, to re-join the world of the living. 

I painfully realize, you can never reciprocate my feelings or answer the thousand questions I have for you. I've pulled down every single wedding photograph of ours and hidden away your t-shirts, because I can't bear to look at your sweet face or smell your gorgeous scent anymore. It kills me. 

I wonder, will I ever be "normal" again? Will this dark cloud in my head, ever blow away? For now, I'm just looking for a meaningful project that will keep me so busy, I have no time to think. So universe, give it to me. Keep me busy, busy, busy.