Tuesday, January 15, 2013

Aama! Heartaches and Memories


My heart aches everytime I try to forget it. The image comes back more graphic. It haunts me; pinches me in my soul somewhere. Good memories gone forever, with such a tragedy, a bitter truth, an ending that does neither tells about the beginning and nor represent the sweetness of the story. A horror! An unexpected fact and a shameful ending, a painful reality that I have to live with the rest of my life… I can’t possibly rationalize nor defend nor accept the news. My rock is gone, my role model crashed and my motivation just shattered like piece of glass, which can never be fixed. Lots of memories just flow with these tears, and dissolves with it, an innocent soul of my grandmother. She was old, lived passed most of her friends, at 85, she was still without any major diseases. She lived a long life, and at 85 when people die, it does not hurt as much. It would hurt me of course but not to this extreme. It was unforeseen; it was even undreamt up, not even in a nightmare. It has shaken my faith in GOD. It asks me questions about the authority. It asks me lot of questions, for which, not only me but no one can answer.

I can’t talk to anyone. Prayed to God, talked to few people for comfort but it does not settle my sorrow. No one has lived and shared those moments with my grandma. No one knew her better than me. Yet, I have no clue, why this happened. I am in the ocean of sorrows and I feel like people are just looking at me drowning and may be laughing. For them it is a scene, a mockery filled story, a tell-tale. No one understands the pain of my soul; it is deep. Never in my life, have I wished to go back to my childhood or teenage years, or school years to relive them. But now, I wish life was like a video game where I could go back and start at a point where I have saved it last. I wish I have a time machine on which I can go back and fix things, do something before this would happen. Reality is bitter. I am left with perhaps a never ending reminder or a saddest irony of this nature. Nature is so strong, stand in front of us like we are nothing, just a lump of nothing. Our emotions, love, caring, feeling, faith, religions, relationship means nothing to it. Nature is never impressed or depressed with our everyday mundane sadness and happiness. May be there is a bigger picture in all this, maybe there is some answers, but I am not getting it. I am not a magicians, I don’t understand the mysteries. I am a simple, helpless man of no recognitions whatsoever. I am sad.

I remember when grandpa passed away; his sons went to the crematory and performed their rituals. Being a little kid, I was not allowed. I took my grandmother to take the bath and watched her change her clothes to plain white rugs and crash her bangles. I shared that moment with my grandmother. And when I came back and spent the 12 days in the ‘mourning’, I remained with her in her room as a friend. We sat in silence and wept in silence. People came to visit and console and talked to her. When they went, we wept more, when we were alone, she in her bed and I slept in my grandpa’s bed. She was sad and I was too, for few years. But the pleasant memories of my time with grandfather simply negate and made us move pass the denial of the inevitable. The death is certain, of someone who is born in this earth. My grandfather’s empty bed remained there, still there, where I remember him sitting and teasing me to rub his feet. Now there will be two beds. Empty, sad and dark… Only deference is my grandfather said a lot before he died. I can almost write a book on that.

I had a feeling that my visit to her could be last when I went to Nepal but I had not imagined that it would end like this. First few nights, when I was in Nepal, I suffered nightmares, sleeping in my bed. I thought may be somehow I am tired from the flight, and trying to recover all my fond memories of my home. At midnight, one of the glass windows would just make a peculiar ‘dang’ sound, which I was used to, and most of family member knew it. But one night, something more than that happened. As soon as I tried to close my eyes, someone, a ghost or some energy or some force would come and try to take my soul out of me. I would try to open my eyes. It would be hard at first and I would suffer, my heart rate went up but when I could finally open my eyes, everything would come to normal. After 5-6 times, I was really scared. Now suddenly I believed something or someone is trying to hurt me. It is a bright room because of the street lights and I tried not to get scared and believe in supernatural elements, but I could not that day. So I went like a baby to my grandmother’s room. She was sound asleep but she woke up when I called her. “AAMA”, I asked her, Can I sleep in the grandpa’s bed? Something frightened me in that room so bad that I can’t even close my eyes.” She said – ‘sometime happens, they try to scare you, you need to put some metal underneath your pillow’. And she could interpret the dreams in a very interesting way. Since I woke her up, we started talking but nothing about ghosts. Just about life. I asked her to tell me about her life, what was life like 80 years ago, what was her fondest memory of my grandfather etc… She told me few stories. And I fell asleep.
Now all the amazing life story of her will be non-credited and ridiculed. A tremendous life of labor, service, passion, love and faith will just be shadowed by her unfortunate death. I can only point to other people of her bed and couple of my teenage pictures she put above her pillow. She asked me to leave with her picture of mine so she can frame and update her gallery. A soul of love and simplicity. She never quarreled, never took any grudges, never felt angry or sad, never complained about life’s sufferings. For me she was like an idol, a copy of God, she was forever the same, never interrupted by highs and lows of life, just always the same plain, happy and positive person.

This universe runs in a system and we are a part of this system. We are nothing; I believe more than ever, that all our fates are predestined. We can’t improve it, we can’t destroy it. I don’t know how it works, but it is does. We are not controlling anything. We just are victims, helpless, clueless, confused herd of animals trying to satisfy our urges, either of hunger, or of thirst, or of money, sex, greed or of ego. No one can change or even claim to know our fate. I have talked with my grandmother thousands of time about deaths, and suicides, and we always agreed why it can never be the right way. I never even thought about it in my confusing dreams. What is done, can never be undone. We are probably all responsible of our own actions, may be our actions of the past influence our future, and may be future lives, who knows? No one can prove or disprove either side of this argument. Close to three decades, and my father’s 5 decades were spent with my grandmother and in her tender loving and happy personality. We did everything we could to pay back, and love back. As much sorrow strikes my father, I am weeping for both my grandmother and father’s misfortunes. It is a great loss. My mountain is drowned by flood of this horror. My spirit is troubled thinking about her soul. May be the modern medicine is to blame for tragic and fatal side effects, may be it was supposed to happen this way, we will never know. It will be mystery, a sad mystery, a fact that I would want to forget about the rest of my life and think about all the good memories of my grandmother, who I called AAMA, just a mother. I life my spirit up and drink from this cup of sorrow of bitter truth till I die.

01-15-2013
Irving, Texas

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