Friendships that mend broken hearts

Yesterday, there was a discussion in one group about friendships between men, and the difference in them from friendships between women.

It got me thinking about my friendships, and what they mean to me. A lot of relationships have been tested over the past one year, especially that of me as a mother. It has been a tough year, and I cannot imagine how I would have gone through it alone. I would not have been able to get up every morning, go through each day with a semblance of sanity, and basically keep living in this last year if it hadn't been for my female friends (and I'm happy to include a sister, some nieces, and some sisters-in-law as friends). Their continuous support and messages of 'I can't imagine what you are going through, but call if you want to talk', 'Just thinking of you. Love you', 'I am here if you want to cry, or even if you want to keep quiet', ‘Just take it easy, you don't have to do anything you don't want to do’, ‘We are just a call away’, and many many more like these made me stronger. They let me know I was okay, and would be okay. These friends also promised to keep an eye on me, and let me know if I looked like I wasn't doing okay and needed professional help. That was such precious reassurance.

A lot of these friendships were made when our children were younger, and discussions in those days were not intense - mostly about sleep times, school curriculums and shopping - but these friendships lasted through the years, even if the children themselves lost touch with each other. Over time, we stayed in touch, with some more than with others, more because of Geography than intent. There were calls and meetings, almost daily with some, as infrequently as maybe once a month with some, and only messages on a birthday or an anniversary with others. But each time we connected, we picked up right where we had left it the previous time we connected. There was never a moment of awkwardness or discomfort. The baseline of our friendship was set.

This sisterhood is the best thing that happened to me. It is possible only because we were all willing to invest our time, put in some effort, and openly show that we needed each other. It is comforting to know they will be there, in good times and bad.

The myth is that you can't make good friends as you go older. Friendships are there waiting to be made at any age, so long as we are willing to nurture them. I've made friends in the last few years, even in the last one year, that I know will be there for me. As will I for them, I am sure.

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.

A double whammy on Day 200!

Mourning a mother, and a son

When I would have been mourning about 200 days without my first-born son, I was again at the crematorium with my family, to collect my mother’s ashes. The tears flowed, and continue to flow, incessantly. Now I do not know who I am crying specifically for. I continue to miss Shashank, his laughter, his gentle and very indulgent smile, his glance which always showed me how much I was adored and loved. I hope, and I know, he got the same reassurance every time I looked at him. 

When I would have been mourning about 200 days without my first-born son, I was again at the crematorium with my family, to collect my mother’s ashes. The tears flowed, and continue to flow, incessantly. Now I do not know who I am crying specifically for. I continue to miss Shashank, his laughter, his gentle and very indulgent smile, his glance which always showed me how much I was adored and loved. I hope, and I know, he got the same reassurance every time I looked at him. 

Rationally, I know she needed, and wanted, to go, but I am devastated all over again. My mother’s passing is making me relive Shashank’s going. I am trying to not feel sorry for myself, and don’t want others to look at me with pity, but it is difficult, very difficult to go through each day. I just can’t wait for the time when I will be a better version of my current self.

Pastime for the Powers that be?

 

Yawn! I’m bored. Who shall we do today?

You know, there’s a family I’ve been keeping an eye on.

What made you notice them?

The lady constantly sends messages to her friends and family saying she is so content that she couldn’t ask for anything more in life.

Oh! She is really asking for trouble! And why is she so content?

Well – she lives with her husband in a beautiful house with a garden, surrounded by flowers and greenery, waking up to the sound of birds.

That’s not so uncommon.

Her husband is enjoying his retirement after 40 years of hard work. They are friends and share a similar taste in movies, music and books.

Ok, a little less common, but still…

They have two sons – and they brought them up with the freedom to follow their passion, not necessarily become engineers or start earning big sums of money.

Really? And what do the sons do?

Well, one is a passionate environmentalist, cartographer and drone specialist, who loves his work. He set up his own organisation and has a very happy team who adores him. And.. he is married for the past 7 years to a very intelligent young woman. They both love sunsets and cats.

And the younger one?

He’s also a conservationist, and is figuring out how to work in the sports line while increasing awareness about the environment in the community. He loves  all sports, and the outdoors, and is very happy. And… he has a very lovely girlfriend.

Hmmm… My goodness, this is almost cloying. So what do you think we should do? Give her cancer?

I don’t think that would be enough. Her outlook is so positive that she’ll come out of it successfully. And, they have enough money to handle the treatment without it causing a serious dent.

Oh ok… that won’t work then. It’s no fun when they are able to handle things well. Maybe make them feel lonely and un-loved?

We can’t. They have a wonderful loving family, and a huge network of friends who keep in touch constantly. They really do have a too-good-to-be-true life.

Goodness! You should have told me about them earlier. How did we leave them alone for so long?

Well, we did threaten the family with potentially serious illnesses a few times. And they do have her mother with them, and she’s fully dependent and spends her day on a wheelchair.

But..?

But they handled all that quite well.  There is concern about the mother’s quality of life, but they have managed to make her very comfortable.

Ok…. Let me think. You know how people in their late 30s are just dropping dead inexplicably,  with the possible reason being the heart, the lungs or just plain COVID? Let’s go with that. And let’s go with that when they have just had a wonderful day together, filled with laughter. That way, they will feel the absence even more.

And they did. And we do.

6 months or Half a year or 184 days.. + 2 more days

When am I ever going to laugh out loud like this, watched so lovingly by someone who worships me ??

186 days, half a year - this is how long it has been since I have heard my son’s voice call out to me, or laugh out loud or give me a hug or….. Keeping a count of the days is not going to help in any way, nor is making a list of all the things that I do not have any more. I know this during my calmer moments - thankfully these occur more often than before - and I am able to stop my thoughts from spiralling downwards into the What ifs and the Whys and the Hows.

But then the calm moments are only that, short and temporary. The past few days have been really tough, and everything I see or do has been triggering off memories of Shashank and then the waves of grief carry me off on a, by now all too familiar, rollercoaster. By the time I am able to talk/think myself off, I am physically in gut-wrenching pain, my eyes are burning and a splitting headache. Talking is not helping, nor is reading or watching or knitting or crocheting. I am hoping that writing is going to be the remedy for today which has been a really tough one for various reasons.

I have read enough now about bolstering myself with happy memories, but how does one go on doing that while constantly being reminded that there will be no more new memories that are not tinged with sadness, for ever and ever as long as I live? The past week has been so strange. My husband, younger son and I went out for meals together and I had to stop myself from asking for a table for 4 at every restaurant. There was always the fourth chair vacant at our table, reminding me constantly of ‘the presence of an absence, the absence of a presence’. I heard this phrase for the first time in one of the talks on grief handling that I watched, and it resonated. 

I met a stranger during my morning walk, and only while talking to him did I realise how adept I had become at forming my sentences. “My 2 sons moved to Goa 5 years ago. “They both did their Masters in Conservation”. “One of them married”. The gentleman would have gone away with absolutely no idea that only of my two sons was with us. One of the reasons for my strange sentence-formation could be that my grief is my own, and I have no inclination to share it with strangers. However, it is interesting that these sentences are coming out of my mouth without any conscious effort on my part. 

Already an efficient multi-tasker (or so I believe), over the past six months, I have mastered the art of crying silently while going about with my daily routine without agitating the rest of the family.  What other skills am I going to acquire in the next few days, months and years? 

Why did I not make kozhakattais this year for Ganesh Chaturthi

For a while now, I have not believed in a God who watches over us. All my temple visits have been to admire the construction or the beautiful deities, but it has never been to pray. At some point a few years ago, I decided that I did not like the idea of prayer which stemmed from fear or from a need/greed. I did send out prayers into the world, but they were always thankful messages as I was grateful for the life I was fortunate enough to be leading. I knew that the circumstances which provided me with a happy comfortable life were not always in my control, and I had the good sense to know that I was lucky.

Even if I myself did not believe in gods that looked after us, I liked the rituals linked to Krishna Janmashtami and Ganesh Chaturthi, so on the appropriate days, the idols were decked up and the prasad was made. The flowers for the idols came from our own garden, and this was nothing short of a miracle for someone like me who had spent a large part of my life living in apartments. There were always enough parijaat flowers for the archanai/puja and more than enough red hibiscus flowers to thread into garlands. Making kozhakattais (modaks) for Ganesh Chaturthi was a big event in our house, and it was only in the past 4 or 5 years that I was able to make the rice flour- paste shells in the right shape (they had to stand up like teacups on my palm, ready to receive the filling) and of the right consistency (thin enough for light to go through but thick enough so they kept their shape when steamed). They had to be hand-made, of course, with no resorting to readymade moulds which could have made my life easier.

But this year, I am devastated, and still struggling to make sense of the tragedy that struck our family. My very beloved elder son suddenly left us for ever, early in the morning on a Saturday in April, and our lives turned upside down then, to say the least. I had no gods to rant to, or about, and that is another problem that I will have to cope with some other day. I watch people celebrating Ganesh Chaturthi and Janmashtami with fervour and devotion, and have to control the urge to tell them that it is all pointless. I also have to suppress the voice that tells me that such a tragedy befell us because I didn’t believe in gods and/or pray to them, as that can lead to some very dark thoughts. Believe me, in the past 4 months, I know all the different paths that can lead to spiralling rabbit holes of sorrow and confusion and darkness. When I am able to claw away from the edge of these thoughts, thanks to being surrounded by very loving family and friends, I know that one day, I will again learn to be grateful for the good times we did have, and the happiness (even if always tinged with an absence and sadness) that lies ahead. Right now, all I can think of is “How am I going to cope with Diwali?