“People die, I think, but your relationship with them doesn't. It continues and is ever-changing.” Jandy Nelson
We already started to live the last month of the year 2016. This year was strange. I lost a precious part of mine, but at the same time, I learned something invaluable from that loss. Here is the short glimpse of that loss what entered into our lives unplanned.
If I remember correctly, it was around 9 am when my airplane landed at IGI airport in New Delhi. I came out, collected my baggage then moved to the domestic terminal to catch another flight. The first time, when I was there, I didn’t feel any hurry either eagerness to reach home. I felt like I am missing something and am going to lose it forever. I wanted to escape from everything, an escape from reality which I might see soon, and that was the reason for my reluctances I had that morning. I reached the domestic terminal and had to wait for almost 2 hours before taking the next one. During those waiting times, I didn’t feel to call someone or chat. There was emptiness around me, and I was feeling restless to witness another stage of life which was knocking at my door. It was mid noon, and I could remember the bright sunny day outside. But I was experiencing the silence and impervious darkness around. The darkness, that seemed to hover over my head and to take away every single ray of light I had before. The time I had spent during the flight between New Delhi and Lucknow, I didn’t realize even a single bit of it because the entire time was occupied in search of dimensions to draw some more conclusions from the life.
I arrived at Lucknow Airport around 1 pm and then took the cab. The distance between Lucknow airport and my home is not long, maybe be around 2 hours. But that day, I was counting the time, every moment of that period was full of questions rather than the happiness of meeting my family again after a long time. The cab dropped me at in front of my house, I took my bag and stepped in. At that moment, when I took the first step, for few seconds my foot was in the air. I was lost in the thoughts, and I was asking myself why the time is meddling with my life. I have never allowed the time to play with me, then why now? Why the time seems more powerful, and yelling at me and saying that finally he conquered and I lost.
My heart started to pound heavily, and somewhere I wished, it would have been nice if I could hold the things in the same way as I left. But that was my heart, scared of being alone every time. I stepped inside with a lot of fear and convincing myself that I need to show consent to the reality, and need to understand that the reality is not always brutal. The darkness is not always there to spook, sometimes its presence reminds that the morning will come soon. Though the thoughts are thoughts, seems very practical when you have to say to someone else but gets complicated when there is a requirement to imply on you. Even there was a lot of commotion inside, I held everything inside, my tears too and didn’t let the dark painful clouds to rule my countenance. I crossed the living room, it was empty and barren instead of livelihood. Then I went to other room, I looked in the kitchen. But my eyes were not able to find what they were intended to find. For what they had traveled so far and spent 9 hours in the flight. I went upstairs to check, but as usual, I again met the disappointment. I came back to the living room and finally realized that what I was looking so far, it was already gone. My grandma was gone, gone forever. My disappointment burst into tears, and later the face acquired the crimson red color because of anger. The anger was not to anyone that I wasn’t informed. That anger was for the time, clinched even the last opportunity to be there in her last moments and left me with the guilt of not being there at that time.
Since last five months, she is not with us. But now I know she is never gone, she is always with us. She made me realize that distance doesn’t matter, between the continental boundaries either after the death. Love is always there within you, and no one has the power to take that from you. You need to learn how to love and that would be the only thing which might last long other things are fragile. I love you “Amma” and thankful to you for making me a better and stronger person than I was before.
What I shared with you, and what we meant to, it will never change,
Even the things will be lost one day, we will be alive in our thoughts like a mountain range,
Nothing is gone, it's only us, we are forced to perceive the end,
But in reality, relations are dimensionless as the sky, and there we need to go and build a home for ourselves, my dear friend.
