Category: Loss
-
The Big C
The specter looms shadowy. I tell myself I should not go there. Trouble is anything I google leads me there. I ignore, I stay away from research. I rank the possibilities from the banal to the unthinkable. Menopause with all its problems, I can handle. The terminal illness I am not sure how to feel…
-
Losses Unknown
“Can you show me a picture of thatha?” Laddu asks, thrusting an old album at me. “Sure!” I say as I flip open the book. In my head, I am thinking Giri thatha, my Appa who never knew his granddaughters. I know though that she is talking about Rajamani thatha, the only one she has…
-
Ten Years Of Grief
I pause at the doorway, my eyes lingering on the monthly planner. The kids have been crossing out days religiously since the beginning of the month to Thanksgiving. My eyes however, have been on a different date. The funk has been closing in on me like an ominous bubble. Sometimes they are visceral, sometimes they…
-
When Love Is Not Enough
“She reminds me so much of my daughter when she was this age!” “She is so much like you.” “Perfect mix of you and Saathi.” The comments make me smile. I touch my daughters cheeks and mine as if the contours tell a story that only my fingers understand. She looks at me, eyes bright…
-
Bittersweet
I sit in the silent living room, the silence accentuated by the sounds of my fingers flying on the keyboard. I sit trying to make sense of the meltdown I just witnessed. Ammu, for forty-five minutes today you wept. Distraught and inconsolable. The only words you kept repeating were “Daddy”. I held you close, I…
-
A life snuffed too soon.
Late evening, darkness falling silkily over the apartment on the 10th floor. The balcony is open with the evening breeze wafting in. The kitchen bustles with activity as dinner is being made. We sit in the modest living room. All of us gaggle of cousins, aunts, uncles, nieces. Voices rise and fall, laughter being the…