Tomorrow marks the 1 month anniversary of Amma’s passing. Is it one month already ? Is it only a month ? Both thoughts sit side by side inside my head. It seems a lifetime ago since I heard Amma’s voice...Wasn’t it just yesterday that she was sitting around the dinner table eating pani puri..scraping coconut butter off the pan ? I close my eyes..I see her talking crystal clear...I open them and she is a bit hazy now....
Living in Pune, it is easy to imagine that she is going about her daily routine back home in Bangalore..and my mind slips into that automatic delusion ever so often..until the events of the past month flow by in a flash, and then that now familiar stab of pain returns.
We are all limping into a new normal now- Appa, my brother, his family, my aunts, and I. New routines are starting to replace old ones.. New support systems being formed..as we learn to hold on to each other, instead of being held by her... Trying in small small ways to fill the gaping hole, she left behind. It is a new way of thinking, a new way of living, a new way of being.
Amma, you always said ‘Inneki chetta, Nalayki rendu’. ‘If you die today, it is the 2nd day tomorrow.’ It’s a month tomorrow Ma, and while time has indeed moved on, in so many many ways, Time stands still.
Living in Pune, it is easy to imagine that she is going about her daily routine back home in Bangalore..and my mind slips into that automatic delusion ever so often..until the events of the past month flow by in a flash, and then that now familiar stab of pain returns.
We are all limping into a new normal now- Appa, my brother, his family, my aunts, and I. New routines are starting to replace old ones.. New support systems being formed..as we learn to hold on to each other, instead of being held by her... Trying in small small ways to fill the gaping hole, she left behind. It is a new way of thinking, a new way of living, a new way of being.
Amma, you always said ‘Inneki chetta, Nalayki rendu’. ‘If you die today, it is the 2nd day tomorrow.’ It’s a month tomorrow Ma, and while time has indeed moved on, in so many many ways, Time stands still.
No comments:
Post a Comment