Twelve long months. It could be twelve years. It could be a lifetime for a let-up from the numbing grief. It comes in a rush of painful waves, in wrenching jabs. Every waking and sleeping moment is instinct with the memory of the departed. In moments of abstraction, I stow away bits and pieces of information I need to share with him.
The shirt still lying on the clothes rack, the book bookmarked at page 72, the shoes standing in the hallway are imbued with his self, his being. I dare not take them away, he might just come for them one day. Every time there is a clang at the gate my heart misses a beat. Is this all a nightmare that I am going through just to find that everything is fine and he is just there. The thought lasts for brief moments before reality dawns, devastating and cruel. I wish every minute of every day he were there. How could someone who provided so much meaning to my life not be there. Unthinkable. Impossible. The inexplicable randomness of life!
Life changed in the twinkling of an eye when everything appeared normal. A bright day, blue skies, sunflowers in the green patch straining at the breeze, honking of cars, the calls of hawkers and the voices of school going children. In the midst of everything wholly ordinary, the world in its homely detail, this earth shattering event for me. Our days were filled with each other’s presence, the rustle of newspapers, flavours from the kitchen, the scent of flowers wafting on the gentle breeze amidst the aroma of coffee and a great camaraderie.
D H Lawrence wrote in his book The Rainbow that “the afternoon was spacious and wonderful.” So it seemed, afternoons stretching in time, beautiful times that last and last where existential questions jostled with pointless things. We looked at the sky, we looked at the Sun sliding into the horizon, red and fiery and we said nothing would change. The voice is silenced for ever and I shall never hear it nor will I talk the way I did. Everything is the same but everything isn’t.
Seasons change, days and months pass but grief keeps no distance. Kafka says in Kafka and the Doll that “everything you love, you will eventually lose, but in the end, love will return in a different form”. I can only hope.
Sudha Devi Nayak
Email: sudhadevi_nayak@yahoo.com