Going, Going, Gone.
It was six thirty AM. My phone’s alarm played its loud Talia orchestra in my right ear. I forced hard to grumble awake but almost instinctively hustled through the sheets to grab my phone and make a groggy swipe on the snooze button. Not a morning person, and never once was. Waking up in the morning was a ritual that demanded deliberate effort and persuasion for as long as I had experienced. The five minute bursts of the snooze helped me scrape through this process, preparing me to wake up and face the day.
It’s funny how our brain remembers the most trifle of details sometimes. It was a Saturday and the seventh day of the month of May, when I received that unforgettable call. The happy hues of the British spring were gleaming through the rustic square window in the room. My phone rang and I barely squinted through the piercing brightness of the screen to identify the caller. I recognized the number almost instantly and with a strange thought of “something’s about to happen”, I answered reluctantly.
It was a call from the nurse station at the hospital where my father was admitted a day earlier, requesting me to come over at the earliest. Although the woman on the other end sounded seemingly composed, half way through the conversation, a gazillion thoughts had begun to race through my mind. I urged her to give me the reason for this exigent request but all she said was that the doctor wanted to speak to the next-of-kin, immediately. My body felt extremely sore after the traumatic upheaval of the previous day, endlessly waiting outside the operating theatre, hoping to see happy faces of the medical team with good news for me.
I hustled out of my bed and within minutes, was speeding away to the hospital in a black cab through the buzzing streets of London. The car’s radio was playing Oasis’ melody of the “Morning Glory”. The lyrics were pulsating in my heart like it was a sign for me to hear these words to make this disquieting journey,
All your dreams are made
When you’re chained to the mirror and the razor blade
Today’s the day that all the world will see
Another sunny afternoon
Walking to the sound of my favorite tune
Tomorrow never knows what it doesn’t know too soon
Need a little time to wake up
Need a little time to wake up wake up
Need a little time to wake up
Need a little time to rest your mind
My anxiety was more than apparent to the driver, especially with me hemming and hawing on the phone with folks back home. I flurried through a couple of emails and text messages on my phone, in an effort to remain unperturbed. I recollect speaking to my mother and telling her that I may come back, permanently changed. I tried hard to hold back a few tears. I didn’t want to fizzle out. I was repeating to myself that everything is going to be fine and that I will make it. I couldn’t break down. At least not yet.
On arrival at the hospital, I literally sprinted out of the taxi, paid the driver, mumbled a few words and galloped my way to the patient ward. I noticed the team of doctors already waiting for me at the facility entrance. I could feel my legs trembling while walking towards them. Within minutes I was taken into a quiet room, seated comfortably and offered a glass of water (just in case, I suppose). The doctor & I exchanged some quick glances. Not much of a face reader, but sitting in the disturbing fuzziness of that room, I knew right then that the following conversation was going to be life-altering. He gave me a long irresolute look and then finally spoke, “I am sorry, we did our best but I don’t think he has enough time”. Strangely those were the only words I recollect in memory, for everything he spoke after that seems blur in my conscious. I desperately grappled for some breath to absorb the news and fought hard against weeping out aloud. My breath seemed caught in my throat with a barely audible gasp and beads of sweat dripping down my face. For a few seconds, everything in my body hurt. It even hurt to breathe. Weak-kneed and tear-blinded, I found a trembling string of my voice and murmured a few meek words in return.
A couple of hours after that dreadful conversation, I kissed my dad, goodbye. At the wake, I did not grieve. I kept telling myself that he would have preferred to leave this way, gracefully and respectfully. All I could do was to be supportive of my mother, who had lost the love of her life. The only tears I shed was because I could not bear to experience my mother losing her companion, her person. I was right, I have changed, but at that moment in the close confide of the hospital, I could not have assumed or even predicted, how much. Two months later I am sitting here, finally being able to muster enough courage and pen these strings of words.
“Grief can destroy you — or focus you. You can decide a relationship was all for nothing if it had to end in death, and you alone. Or you can realize that every moment of it had more meaning than you dared to recognize at the time, so much meaning it scared you, so you just lived, just took for granted the love and laughter of each day, and didn’t allow yourself to consider the sacredness of it. But when it’s over and you’re alone, you begin to see it wasn’t just a movie and a dinner together, not just watching sunsets together, not just scrubbing a floor or washing dishes together or worrying over a high electric bill. It was everything, it was the why of life, every event and precious moment of it. The answer to the mystery of existence is the love you shared sometimes so imperfectly, and when the loss wakes you to the deeper beauty of it, to the sanctity of it, you can’t get off your knees for a long time, you’re driven to your knees not by the weight of the loss but by gratitude for what preceded the loss. “And the ache is always there, but one day not the emptiness, because to nurture the emptiness, to take solace in it, is to disrespect the gift of life.” — Dean Koontz, Odd Hours
Death, as they say, is perhaps the hardest on the living. The irrecoverable loss of a dear one is a very excruciating journey that forces you to question even the little elements of your existence that you presumed you knew well.
Having gone through this disconcerting experience myself, I have understood that anyone in my shoes essentially goes through four key stages in this process:
1. Accepting the reality of the loss and making peace with their permanent absence from your life.
2. Experiencing the real pain of grief, living through all those moments you shared with that person and those that you may never be able to share again.
3. Adjusting to the environment in which your loved one is missing and getting yourself acquainted with the myriad changes around you.
4. Reinvesting all your energy into existing and new relationships and rebuilding your life, thereafter.
After several attempts of sheer retrospection and unabashed confabulation, this is what I have come to realize, in a nutshell.
Focus and think about what truly matters to you. What makes you smile and brings you child-like happiness, every single day. Make time for your family and friends. Chart your life’s plan. Set your goals. Work your best towards achieving them. But every once in a while, pause, exhale and look around. Soak it in, ’cause this is it. It might all be gone tomorrow. Life is much like a spectator sport. The only difference being it’s not as simple as just winning, losing or drawing. So go ahead and argue your point with the referee, or bend the rules, or cheat a little, or just celebrate those wounds. But play, play, play. Play hard, Play fair, Play free. But, Play like there’s no tomorrow!
