Skip to main content

Other times in December


Sometimes, grief feels numb. Like when you wipe the roof of your mouth with your tongue. Other times, grief burns. And, it’s raw. It bites. Like the feeling you have when there is a blister in your nasal cavities.

I might be wrong. May be there are no moments when grief feels numb. Perhaps it is all a performance – that numbness – just to aid us live and survive through daily toils.

It might be that each time grief is fire, carried in a knapsack. That when we lose, and grieve, we are forced to carry fire. As is every other fire, sometimes it warms us. Other times, it burns us. Unlike most fires, it does not consume us. Or, perhaps, it consumes us little by little. Maybe it nibbles at us in quiet gradual ways. Our souls disintegrate, it might be, at the pace of natural soil formation. Or, more aptly, at the rate of continental drift.

In 2014, in December, I had texted with a friend late in the night. She was hospitalised.

It had been a brief illness. Almost as if it was no illness.

Four days before: she had jetted into Malawi.

Two days after: she complained of a headache.

An additional two days: she was hospitalised. The over the counter medication she had taken had not been helpful.

“It’s meningitis,” she wrote. “I am almost in paralysis – a half of me. I am in pain.”

I wanted to call. She could not talk. She said I should call the following day. She was hopeful. I was certain I would call the other day.

The other day? No prize for guessing. A message from her sister:

“Dave, Esther died in the night.”

There is no word, or words, that ably capture the confusion that comes after hearing about death. The emotions one goes through after that are not just chaos. I went back to the texts from the previous night. She had feared she might die. I had told her to push out that thought, I was about to call her the next day.

But, she was right. I was wrong.

Now, her memories are this: grief. A fire. In the knapsack. Carried on the laps. Hidden yet still in sight.  

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The time you meet a stranger who reminds you of a long gone friend

When you meet a stranger with thin lips, a light complexion and a figure like that of the friend who died in 2004, memories overwhelm you. You look at the stranger, sitting next to you in a public transport, with a bewilderment that forces her to smile – not an innocent smile, of course, but one that warns you politely that your stare is making her uncomfortable. And, in turn you give her back a smile. The same smile you could have given your friend were she alive but then you suddenly go back into a space in time. A space you only keep in memory but will never have it again. When you meet a stranger who reminds of a long gone closest friend, you are reminded of how you had come to learn of her death: she had not suffered a lot. She had been sick for two (or is it three?) days, she had complained of chest pains and when they took her to the hospital, the doctors said it was pneumonia and they had just given her some antibiotics. You remember that it was a Wednesday,...
3 comments
Read more

What would Jesus do?

The sun was just beginning to burn the shores of the Sea of Galilee. Some weeks before, four fishermen had been fished from their trade by the carpenter’s son to be his disciples. They were now with him. Sitting on the shores of the sea they had always regarded as a home. Their past, forgotten; hope erected in the future. Jesus, for that was the name of the son of the carpenter whom the church had denounced, was busy preaching to his congregation. His voice was small, his frame was little – almost frail. The cloth he had used to wrap his body in was dirty such that in within his congregation you could hear some little whispers of people wondering what made this man believe he was the son of God and not just Joseph, the carpenter. His voice had no charisma. It lacked that magic and fire that John the Baptist (now in prison) had had in those days when he had baptized people in this very same sea, calling them of the wicked generation, calling them to turn away from their sins...
2 comments
Read more

Wet pillars

If someone ever tells you that in chasing dreams then you need not rest, nor chase anything else, then you will have met a liar. Or a prophet. Or a fake motivational speaker. Most likely, two of these. For, there will be moments when those dreams become elusive and frustrating. In that, you will need something else – a distraction. Or, a detour – a longer route to the dreams. You do not give up on dreams. Not that easily. But you detour from them and return with a new energy. She never had to sit under a fake motivational speaker, so she knows all there is to chasing dreams. From an actual practice. “The thing is: I had my life planned.” She gave herself deadlines: marriage? Yes, I want that thing but not before getting my Master qualification. Children? Yes, those tiny little angels; I want them too, but only after I am properly married. Love? Yes, that too. Overflowing. I want it. Anytime. Anyhow. And, of those, love was the first one to come. It found her w...
Post a Comment
Read more