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.