New year

Nothing like passage of time as spending a new year’s eve. End to one year. Beginning of another. Just a point in time that means nothing in the larger scheme of things. Just another day has passed in a world without ma’s physical presence. And it’s okay. Outside nothing has changed. We all spent our New Year’s Eve bringing 2018 in and bidding 2017 goodbye. We also had a good time. Friends made revelry and the pain of loss recedes into the background; never far away, like a dull ache inside. Sometimes comes into the fore and tears are shed but the moment passes. I even joked that we lost Tom Petty, George Michael and my mother in the same year. 

New Year’s Eve was always a celebration in our house. We had parties, or attended parties with friends and family. As long as I can remember we celebrated with our close family friends in Bombay. Later we had our own friends of course, and once we moved away the customary call home to wish your parents took over. Even that customary call’s absence stings today. Just as it stings on any holiday or milestone. But we made it through our wedding anniversary, Christmas and now New Year’s Day marked without that call or a random whatsapp video. Those things that I barely acknowledged now make up for memories of my mother. It’s not that it was devoid of meaning or feelings. That’s what our relationships become over time, spread over distance. Phone calls, messages and forwarded videos take up the space of a hug, pronam or kisses. So ordinary and yet the absence of it is just a sign for absence of something else, that someone who was thinking of you on these special days isn’t there anymore. But I think of her and I think of her more deeply and fondly than I have before.