Blue

COVER STORY

Exactly one year ago, down to the day – 20 September 2023 – my mother passed away. Except there is no way it has been a whole year because it can’t possibly have been that long. 12 weeks? Maybe. But 12 whole months? Come off it, Mr. Dent!

I have no idea why the calendars have suddenly decided to lie, but someone definitely needs to alert the local galactic time council ASAP because time has clearly gone all wibbly wobbly.

If it had actually been 365 days, surely some of this would have started to make sense by now. But it still makes no sense. None whatsoever. Life itself no longer makes sense. Neither does the universe and everything. What even is the point of all this? Why are we here? Why must we go? Is a hot dog a sandwich? Why a duck? And what do you get when you multiply six by nine?

All valid questions to which I still have no answers. Except the last one, of course, the answer to which is obviously 42.

But my point is, it still doesn’t feel real, yet it still hurts. Boy does it hurt!

Everything that happened a year ago – allegedly a year ago – keeps going round and round and round in my head. Every detail remains etched in my mind, every recollection stings. A memory can randomly float into my brain and instantly wreck my head. A sight, a sound, a smell, a phrase … anything can trigger an eye-water tsunami. I can go through the five stages of grief, sometimes all in one day, often several simultaneously, and then end up back at square one.

The person who loved me the mostest is gone and there is nothing I can do about it. There is a vacuum where she once was. I want to tell her things; I want to ask her what to do; I want her to hug me and tell me everything will be ok, that I’ll be ok. But she isn’t there. No matter how many times I replay those last few days in my mind and think of how differently things could have gone, I can’t change what happened. Her heart stopped; mine’s still beating. She’s gone; I’m still here. And everything still keeps making my eyes leak. A lot.

Before my grandmother passed away, she told my mother that “akalmand loag sabar kartay hain, bewakoof loag rotay hain,” [intelligent people have patience, idiots cry] in response to which my mother promptly informed her that Mom fell in the second category. By grandma’s metric though, I am clearly bewakoofoon ki sardar [emperor of idiots]. Like, if crying was an Olympic sport, Pakistan would have had not one but two gold medallists this year. Imagine the glory I could have brought to the country and go petition the IOC to hold crying competitions henceforth. At this point, I can confidently assure you I will deliver.

As cool as being a champion crier may sound though, I realize this is, in fact, a very uncool admission. For our #HumbleAndBlessed generation, the show of any kind of weakness – emotional or otherwise – is frowned upon. But our manicured appearances and curated profiles are only leaving us feeling isolated and disconnected to the point that we end up collectively trauma dumping on a Muppet who just happened to ask how everybody is doing.

Because it’s so hard to tell someone around you how you are doing.

It’s hard to find people. The right people. The ones who actually care. The ones who will answer your blubbering phone calls in the middle of the night, who will hear you whine about the same things over and over and over, and who will not judge you when you are a complete and utter mess.

But bless their hearts, they exist. They are there. And through all my crying, I have been fortunate enough to – more often than not – have a shoulder to cry on. From the lovely cousin whose literal shoulder became the receptacle for my tears minutes after my mother’s passing (and who very patiently pretended like my incoherent babbling was making perfect sense), to the bestest of buds who have offered virtual and real company at the worst of times, I’ve been getting by with more than a little help from my friends.

Has it still sucked? Very much so. But just being able to tell someone how much it sucks has taken away some of the inherent loneliness that comes with an experience like this.

Losing a loved one is the hardest thing you will ever go through. And it will be awful. Super hella awful. If you have never experienced it, I wish I had something more profound to say that could reassure you, but I have nothing. Mostly because there really is nothing profound to say. The only advice I have for you is: just be lucky. Be lucky enough to find the right people who will help you get through this awful time. The people you might feel you don’t deserve but who are still there for you anyway for some reason. The kind who never leave a message unanswered and never tell you you’re a burden; the ones who will send you food to make sure you eat, and bake you a water lily birthday cake in reference to your mom’s name, honouring her memory. Better still, be that person for someone else. Help them though the crap life throws at them, and do it without judgement. Don’t deride others for being a mess. And feel free to be one yourself. Be ok with not being ok. It’s fine. How you feel is valid.

Different people grieve differently. A dear friend’s partner went to work the day after his father died. Another friend teared up telling me about his mother’s death, 30 years after she passed away. There is no “one size fits all” approach to coping with grief. And there is no timeline; don’t let anyone pressure you into thinking there is. Just do you.

And do yourself a favour and accept the fact that it will probably always suck. Time’s healing powers have been greatly exaggerated. You will adapt to the loss, sure, but it will randomly punch you in the gut whenever the hell it feels like it. It will suck when you lose someone close to you. It will suck a year later. It will suck 30 years later. As it should. Because the foundation of grief is love. And even though your person is no longer there, your love for them will live on in this realm till the moment you take your last breath.