Two years today, my mother transitioned from time to eternity. Since I got that call from my younger brother Michael, the most dreaded words, still reverberate in my mind’s ears. I was not ready for her one-way journey at 59; certainly so because of the many crucibles of life we both had to navigate to get me to where I was and how life, in return, promised us comfort to a great degree. But perhaps hers was just to prepare me for my own journey through life.
In the months that followed, my life tethered on (undiagnosed) depression, I kept company with anxiety, and I touched “grief’s core”, as Chimamanda puts it. I was hounded by doubts of whether I loved her enough; guilt of not having bade a well-deserved farewell and being unable to save her from the clutch of death so early on. And of course, the constant sorrow stemming from the reality of never having that opportunity to shower her with unbounded love and comfort into a ripe old age. Grief has a way of berating and crushing us at the same time. I believed (or I was made to believe) that I was strong in spirit but the debilitating effect of her loss on me, has made me realize that we are only as strong as we are vulnerable. One minute of sanity could slide into emotional pandemonium. We are all just trudging on life’s precipice.
A year ago, we commemorated her first year of passing. My dad was alive and wrote a beautiful tribute to the woman he was with for over forty years before her death. It wasn’t a classic love story—my parents’ love and marriage was more about endurance than frills. If there’s anything I don’t want in love/marriage, it’s what my parents had (even though it worked for them for over four decades!). Somehow, as a duo and in silos, they showed us, their children love, affection and care that even their material lack didn’t compromise. After our mom’s passing, we huddled around my dad who was about 15 years older than our mom. He appeared to us as strong in mind and as in body even after a year of her passing. But I guess when people lose their long-term spouse, there is a cosmic effect on the surviving spouse however imperfect their love/marriage was. A few months after the memorial, my father took ill and eventually passed about 18 months after his wife. The landscape of my unhealed mind was turned upside down. I was still reeling in shock, guilt and brokenness for Si’Kai’s death, and grossly unready for a whole new layer of grief and pain to be added. It felt like a fresh cut to an old, un-mended wound.
Now, I must toggle between griefs. Some days, overwhelmed by memories and sentiments, I pause grieving my mom to grieve my dad and vice versa. My parents were two dissimilar people who related to me in disparate ways and meant different things to me. My mom was the extroverted buoyant, happy-go-lucky woman who was defiant as much as she was empathetic. She was a strand that held every community she was part of. My dad was the principled disciplinarian who did not only ferry us to the stream of education but forced us (literally with his whip) to drink and be intoxicated with knowledge. He was the renowned truth-speaker who showed us love more in discipline than pampering. So, it is impossible to conflate my mourning for such uniquely differing souls who touched my life in matchless and divergent ways.
Two years on from my mom’s passing, I woke up to the usual toggle between griefs. My parents are united in eternity, but they are two souls I loved and mourn differently.