No other loss

In many ways the wonders of life are experienced through parenthood. How a child grows and develops from infancy to toddlerhood and expresses its individual traits are a wonder only really experienced from raising a child. And the love that you experience as a parent is unparalleled to any other relationship. It is experiential. 

Ironically such is the experience of loss of a loved one in death. There are many kinds of losses. The one that ends in death is one that is such a blow because it ends so many things at once. Your plans and intentions, your interactions. Other losses via a loss of relationship are not as final as death. There is nothing in life that prepares you for this. Just like nothing in life that prepares you to be a mother. Nothing prepared me for the loss of my mother. 

I have such selfish thoughts about those who have their mothers. I recoil from sharing too much because they just will not get it. People banally tell me about adapting and how it will get better with time. I know that. I don’t want to be told it will get better. I want this feeling to stay. I don’t care about feeling joy. And nothing retains the joy I may temporarily feel over something. If there’s something I learned is that everything is transient except that she’s gone.  The agony and the fundamental loss you feel is so profound. And yes you go back to social interactions at some point but at each second in the back of your mind this loss is gnawing. The most that any of my friends have experienced is a loss of a grandparent. Not to diminish that loss, but all except one friend for whom a grandmother was more than just that and who grieves even now for her-had a very perfunctory approach to that loss. Sure - an ailing, frail grandparent one that was a once powerful figure one almost feels a sense of relief at their passing on, free from the burden they themselves don’t want to endure anymore. But it’s nothing like losing Ma. And it mostly makes me angry when that’s used as a comparison. Most friends still have grandparents. That’s not a luxury I got to have as the significantly younger sibling. But my mother wasn’t old. She was 71 for God’s sake. I had no illusions of her living to 100, but I still feel robbed. 

And when I think about how ill Ma was, had she survived the onslaught of the organs malfunctioning, her quality of life would have severely diminished. I mean I myself was so calm and collected when I helped make those end of life choices, having nothing but her dignity and comfort in mind and knowing that nothing was my choice really. Yet in the depths of my despair, I find myself feeling that I would even now choose her ailing and frail but in her physical body, no matter how decimated it is over this sense of loss. I would spend time with her, more than I did in my last 15 years. I would touch her, talk to her and listen to her one way barrage. I feel robbed of her participation in my life, in her participation in the milestones of my sons life. I would have prioritized the time with her over every experience i have in visiting home. I wish she could have lived till a ripe 96. So many got a chance, why not her? Why not me? And nobody gets to tell me it’s better this way. It’s not their place. 

I know these are useless unproductive banters. I try to imagine she’s in peace now, free from the ravages of her body and free from the yearnings of her mind. It’s what I have to think to calm my own mind. But I don’t want commiserations. I don’t want anyone’s sympathy. I’m just angry that she’s gone, snatched away from me. I’m angry with myself for not giving her the time i should have. I don’t cry as much anymore and I hate it. I hate feeling numbed to this pain. I feel forced to participate in this life of routine and enjoyable situations like dinners and outings only to come back to myself and feel anger, disappointment and despair waiting for me in my alone time. I am angry that some days I feel normal. Yet I’m slipping into those periods of grief where the world has moved on and I appear normal but I am the only one who knows this sadness. And everyone expects that I am the youngest, with a child of my own, so I must move on. I don’t want to move on. This is where I want to be for now.