At the end (almost) of a terrible year

 35 - that’s the number of Saturdays I have woken up on, remembering the moment when I woke up that one fateful Saturday in April.

252 days since Shashank and I wished each other good night, 251 days since I last heard the word Mama from my dear son.

I know it makes no sense to keep a count of such terrible things, but then there isn’t much that is making sense anyway. I am grieving as much today as I was a month ago or 2 months ago or 8 months ago, and the way it is going, it is probably never going to stop. I am surely able to function better, which just means I am able to hold in the grief, to make it a part of me, and take it along with me.

Thankfully, not a single person (either friend or family member) has suggested that I should not have eyes swimming in tears while talking to them, that by now I should have learnt to ‘get on with it’, that I need to ‘move on’.

One change in the past few days is that I am able to do things like baking a carrot cake or making peanut chutney for dosas with pleasure at the thought of how much Shashank would love eating them, rather than with the thought of how Shashank will never eat them again. I am hoping that the one session of Brain Working Recursive Therapy I had with a grief therapist is responsible to some extent for this. I am never going to not be sad at the loss of Shashank (the grief from this has engulfed the grief I had at my mother’s passing even though that was 6 months later), but I have learnt to not let my thoughts spiral downwards into a scary vortex from which I used to have to struggle to claw my way up.

I am listening to the audiobook of Healing after loss by Martha Whitmore Hickman for the second time and so much of it resonates. This was what I heard today - “My hope is found in my love, not in the degree of my grief”. I am hopeful that Shashank is at peace wherever he is, that I will be eternally grateful for the times we have had together, that someday in the future it will be my turn to join him, and till then, I will be able to make everyday count, to make every moment worthwhile.

Being grateful... really?

 Today I am going to try and be grateful as that is what many write-ups by grief experts

(what does this even mean - people who are experts at handling grief or people who are 

experts at feeling grief which automatically means they are not handling it well?) suggest. 

So here goes :

I am super grateful that Shashank chose me: A friend recently said that she had heard children choose the parents they want to be born to. If that’s true, then I must have done something right to have Shashank as my first-born. How much happiness we have had together.

I am very grateful that for 27+ years, I had the pleasure of being the mother of two wonderful sons who kept me entertained thanks to being so different from each other, and still so similar too.

I am grateful that for the last 7.5 months, we have been able to keep Shashank’s dream going, with his team almost fully intact.

I am grateful that my mother outlasted my son by 6 months, ensuring that caring for her made me stick to some kind of a schedule over days when I found it difficult to get into bed, and then get out of it.

I am grateful that at times when I am completely debilitated by my grief, I am able to still remember the happy times we have had as a family.

I am grateful that, while I will be laid low by grief two days hence when Shashank would have celebrated 8 years of marriage, I will still be able to hold on to some amazing memories of the wedding week.

I have been told that I will one day understand why this terrible loss had to happen. I beg to differ. I will never ever believe that there was some method in this madness. I can’t believe that Shashank’s going is good for anyone or anything, and nothing that occurs in the future is going to make me believe otherwise. And I am grateful that I have friends and family who agree with me, and don’t ask me to be grateful for any of it. I am sad, I continue to be sad and do not expect this to change in any way in the future. I am only grateful that I seem to have the strength to cope tolerably, function sensibly and be useful to others, while carrying a huge weight of sadness.