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.