Riaan's Mumma

There is no greater feeling that being a parent. You will be entertained and tormented 24*7. There is no "me-time" or free time, once you have a little devil to tend to. And they are, the spawn of the devil himself, let no one tell you otherwise! 

Let me also tell you though, in the chaos, the screaming and the mess, you will find yourself falling more and more in love with your child. It's almost feels like you waited for this tiny person your whole life. How did you even exist without him for so long?

I was very clear I wanted a son, until I had a son. Now i look at little girls, their fluffy little dresses and long to be a girl-mom. The maternal instinct in me, has always been very high. 

I was more excited to become a mom, than the day I got married or got a promotion or a pay hike. You could say, the day, I became a mom, was the most defining moment of my life. Nothing gave me greater joy, if you can ignore the initial few months of perennial nursing, filled with no sleep and post-partum depression. 

New born maamaas and babies are both grouchy and cranky. Thread with caution! Never visit a new born when you're sick, don't kiss them on the face and don't hang around their house for endless hours. Both individuals need sleep or food or Netflix! So just let them be. Visiting a new born is only exciting for you, never for the infant or the mother. 

As cliched as it may sound, with the birth of a child, a mother is born too. Babies don't come with user manuals or remote controls, so you learn on the job. And it's the best job in the world. 

Your mornings and nights are incomplete without their cuddles and "I love yous". The excruciating pain of child-birth is all worth it, as you watch them grow into the intelligent, entertaining beings that they are. 

I'm blessed to be born as Riaan's Mumma. I pray we keep finding our way back to each other, in this birth and the next. 

22 Lessons 2022 Taught Me

1. You are alone and no one can fix that, except you

2. No one really understands what you're going through, except you

3. Having a child is not a consolation prize next to a dead husband

4. However, being a parent is the greatest gift 

5. Your memories never really fade, instead they play on an endless loop, like background music waiting for the volume to be cranked up or down

6. You end up having to bear the weight of your dead spouse's decisions, alone, for the rest of your life

7. Even with an army of well-wishers and loving family by your side, you're alone, because no one can replace your young husband

8. You really want to give one last whack on your late husband's head, because what was he thinking really?

9. Did I really know this person of 14 years?

10. Was it all just a dream?

11. Can I ever find happiness again?

12. Just like life, death is messy and complicated too

13. You can't forgive or forget 

14. Coming back to my parental home was the best and the worst thing that happened to me. Best, because my child is surrounded by so much love and an overdose of pampering. Worst, because I've become an oversized infant all over again. 

15. Work is great, but long weekends are even greater

16. There is no such thing as work-life balance. There is only maddening, bone-crushing, never-ending work. 

17. Everything reminds me of my late husband - starting with the morning fog to the crickets chirping in the night

18. It sucks that he can never see his child growing up

19. Once the romance fades, there's a pile of household chores, office-work and baby-work. If you're a partner who doesn't contribute in easing this load, then there's a problem

20. I no longer believe in the magic of love, because it got me widowed 

21. Forgiving my dead husband is not in the cards anytime soon

22. I can never be at peace with his untimely death 

Prolonged Grief

Hospitals along with it's the forgotten corners with empty stretchers strategically placed there, will always remind me of my husband's motionless body. For a split second, I thought it was all a cruel joke. He hardly looked like a corpse. 

His eyes were closed and his lips were slightly parted. I shook him violently, forcing him to wake up. But he paid no heed. That moment changed everything. The sinking feeling of being completely alone for the rest of my life, hit me like a boulder falling off a cliff and crushing everything under its impact. 

Prolonged Grief; a state of still being in utter shock and disbelief over having your world ripped in two. You're basically an empty Easter egg without the chocolatey goodies inside. You have nothing to give to the world, except darkness. You're Wednesday Addams with a better sense of dressing. 

Prolonged Grief; it takes your breath away, when you least expect it. You find it staring back at you when you catch a band doing sound-check in a mall and when someone at work says, "Close your eyes and be grateful for just being alive" and my brain immediately retorts, "But why should I, a widow with a toddler to fend for, be grateful? My life is hard. I see fairy tales all around me and larger than life weddings, while my partner of 14 years just dropped dead. So no, I'm not grateful"

I have the best parents in the world. They have rooted for me every step of the way. But even with them by my corner, I feel shattered. I never want to be let down by another human being ever again. I've cello-taped all the pieces of my heart to never experience that pain again. 

They say time heals, they lied. They say, the memories fade, they lied again. The reality is, I'll always be the person whose presence makes all the lights in the room, go off. I'll always feel sad and carry the burden of my husband's absence. And that's okay. 

Life is not a bed roses. It is infact hard, horrible, abrupt and bone crushingly final just like death. 

Forward

A little over a year, since Riaan and I found ourselves in this new reality. My young husband's death, was equivalent to the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In the months that followed, my toddler and I faced terrible side effects - physically and mentally. 

The debris in both our minds, will probably take years to clear. But we're moving forward, with immense help from immediate family and well-wishers. 

In times of crisis, it becomes crystal clear who your real friends are and were all along. Expect nothing from anybody. No one can help you, unless you want to help yourself. 

The choice to overcome any hurdle and create a reasonably driven life, is in your hands. While I've always loved working, becoming a mother and having someone to call my own, gave me greater purpose. 

I push through hard days at work, for my son. I stopped wallowing in self-pity after abruptly becoming a widow, for my son. Everything I do, is for my son.

So that's what I'm going to do for the rest of my life - be a mother. I'm not "brave" or "strong", I'm just a mother, doing right by her child. I've left behind the anger stage of my grief, for my son. He doesn't like it when my voice is raised and when I sound aggressive.

If there is a God who can orphan my child of his father, I'm sure he will give us something else to cling on to. Right now we're clinging on to each other. Me, a little more than him. 

Forward, that's how we must lead the rest of our lives. With or without, a father and a husband.

365 Days Of Grief

Close to a year, since I became a widow, had to double up as two parents, transformed into the Hulk; learnt to keep that rage in check (a little) and found my way back into the world of the living.

I died too, on December 6th at 4.30pm. And I continued to die multiple deaths on the days and weeks that followed. During those initial days, my baby kept asking me, why his Baba didn't take his suitcase with him, when he went to God. And then I caught him hugging that suitcase to sleep one night.

The more my son asks me why his father left without saying goodbye, the more I want to live, for him. One parent has irreversibly broken his heart. Psychologists claim children without fathers are aimless, anxious, insecure, clingy and troublesome. 

So I better be alive for his rebellious teen years, his know-it-all 20s and his back-breaking 30s. I'm not going anywhere! Infact, I'm going to hold him to his promise of making 10,000 babies - 5000 cars and 5000 tiny humans (his words, not mine).

My 2.11 year old shook me out of my lunacy/grief/depression. His scared little face and podgy fingers vigorously wiping away my tears, cemented my heart. Going forward, all my decisions will be cold, calculated and self-preserving. 

Grief is like an annoying pigeon, that poops on you, on a bright Monday morning. It comes in the form of management consultants who sit behind you all day at work, who closely resemble your late husband. Same clothes, same banter and the same sleep deprived, tired looking faces.

Then there's the short, slightly podgy, black T-shirt donning chap at the mall, who eerily resembles your late husband. Infact, my child ran behind this fellow, screaming, "Baba! Baba!"

I'm subject to, "Bring Baba back" and "Baba is my favorite" everyday. His baby-brain has wiped away memories of his father's motionless body. He doesn't understand the concept of death, which makes his grief so much more painful than mine. 

In the middle of a screechy, stompy 20 minute, toddler meltdown, he admits, "I'm sad that Baba is gone. He should have stayed with us forever" 

Grief, it multiplies when friends leave your side and when you're told to "quickly move on" and "forget". But grief also irreversibly changes you, a newer, more confident version of you emerges, because you have nothing to lose anymore. So might as well break a leg and unleash your madness into the world.

In the words of Rajnikanth, "En vazhi, thani vazhi"