Take that turn. And sit with the ones who have left and once again hold them. Watch them. Stay in the afterglow of their radiance....
HERAT TO HEART
Lambi hai gham ki shaam, par shaam hi tou hai.
(The night of suffering lengthens, but just a night, that is all) B Faiz Ahmed Faiz
Some evenings are made for partings. They are laden with goodbyes and the scent of departure sets in the hues of twilight. As the night approaches and darkness sets, those departures close in. Like a breath of a familiar face. That place that was once a home, is now about to be abandoned. I feel like those evenings never go away. They stay like a bittersweet reminder of all that is perishable. But, for now, it doesn=t feel like it would ever end. Some homes hold childhoods, a complete past, memories that are imbibed in the walls. That familiar voice still echoing in the corners. You wish you could return. Look back. Take that turn. And sit with the ones who have left and once again hold them. Watch them. Stay in the afterglow of their radiance.
But one who must go, leaves. Yet the heart yearns otherwise, and it seems like the world has stopped somewhere. Some place between the last breath and the fading memory. Or the sight of their light going away. A piece of the heart turns sublime. And like a faint glimmer in the distance and a shy streak of fears and inhibitions disappearing in the sky, a breath becomes a sigh, becomes a misty regret and passes away.
Yet the mind stays strangled in the middle. With the heart wailing and aching, and the thoughts paralysed. It is so disabling. The very realisation that it is the last time. That last day. That last breath. That last moment. It never fades away. It remains a bruise in the mind. It is a place that never heals. It is just layered with moments of life - good or bad. One after the other. Till we think this loss is an afterthought, but it is not. It sneaks in the most vulnerable places. It still smells of the same ache. And it knows how the hurt keeps aching. And when the pendulum swings, the feelings rush back. That riptide takes with it everything. And before you know it, you are on the floor, bawling. Never knowing how much this sadness will weigh and for how long.
And yet, life goes on. Despite the fact a part of you is carried with the funeral. It is even buried with the heart of the beloved. You can never recover what is lost in the winds of time, but you are still only at the mercy of time. The one who survives the loss is still in many ways a recovering corpse. It once again learns. How to walk, talk and feel. For a long time, it feels more comfortable to just be numb, but the truth catches up and there=s no life without knowing what it would be like to make it on the other side; even if you do you let the branches of healing cover the patches of grief spread all over the timeline. Then, once the pain subsides, you look at your loss. Embrace the years of losing people, love and peace. And crawl back towards life. However impossible it may seem. How long this night of departure may be, someday there will be light.
