My grandmother, my father’s mother, was the only daughter, the middle child in a small family of three children. She had the gift of the pen, and could express her emotions with ease through writing. This gift came in handy and was used as an outlet for her innermost emotions after marriage. She bore four children of which only three survived. My father was the second-born son.
Her youngest son passed away when he was only sixteen. He had succumbed to a disease and begged for tea, during his last moments of life, which he did not get. After that, my grandmother never drank tea again. To live with the memories of a son, whom you had loved and lost, is a pain that only a mother can understand. The unbearable loss of a child, the immense guilt of not being able to save your son, is an enormous burden to bear and the worst kind of grief to deal with. My father tried to fill the void in her life, but unresolved grief is very difficult to get rid of. He had his own grief too, which remained unresolved. Death remains a topic which is rarely spoken about and often avoided. My grandmother expressed her pain in her poetry, which we found later on in her diaries.
Six years later, my father got married and started a new life in Canada. Making a living was not easy at first; he often described the rigors of working in a nickel mine in Sudbury to me. Dealing with frostbite on your toes and fingers is a painful experience for an Indian immigrant, especially while your whole family, including your new wife, is back in India enjoying the mild weather. Mining, a profession chosen by his father, was not one of his passions. About a year after my mother migrated to Canada, and I was born, we moved to Ottawa.
Life was frugal at first in Ottawa as a student of Electrical Engineering at Carleton University, but my father embraced his new life with all of his heart. He welcomed other Indian immigrants into our family, in order to fill up the void that he had of losing a little brother. Sometimes, I would wake up in the morning and find another person inhabiting my house. But I didn’t mind at all. I enjoyed the extra attention. These friends would soon get married and have families of their own, which would all become a part of my extended family. The difficulties of being new immigrants in a new country caused us to bond in such a way that we would have never bonded if we were comfortable and complacent. My father always sent money back to his mother, even when we hardly had any. My grandparents came to visit when my brother was born. These friends helped out, during their stay as well. As the years rolled by we grew financially stronger and belonged to many different social circles. There were many circles in which I was the oldest, as if I were everyone’s older sister, and they were my younger siblings. This added the attribute of responsibility to my personality. Some of my father’s friends were older than him. Perhaps, he wanted them to replace his older brother. I grew up never feeling devoid of any kind of relationship. We had everything we needed in our little paradise… our home away from home.
Our paradise was shattered when my grandmother grew ill. My father was relieved when her surgery was successful and we threw a party in honor of that. At the party, one of the children climbed up the shelf that held two glass vases, given to my grandparents on their anniversary, who had later gifted it to my parents. One of those glass vases broke. My father always told me that things try to give you important messages. The message, that we refused to accept, was that my grandmother was not well.
We were told that my grandmother was still ill, so we went to visit her a few months after her surgery. I was twelve years old and saw my father in a new light. He was a different person here; he was somebody’s long, lost son. Finally, his mother wanted him, and not the son that she had lost a long time ago. They spoke volumes to each other through their eyes. Her regret of being away from him for so long, and his longing for her love for all those years. I had never seen so much depth in a relationship before. I wondered how my father managed to build a world for us so far away from her, all this time while hiding his pain from us.
In order to protect my father from grief, he was told that his mother had cancer, the very day that we had to go back to Canada. She had already reached an advanced stage and there was no chance of survival. I am certain that something inside my father died at that moment, because he was never the same person again. My father felt that it would have been better if he had known before. I still remember him, holding his mother in a tight embrace, both of their faces buried in each other, crying as if there were no tomorrow. If one heart could have assimilated all of that pain present in that room at that moment, it would have burst.
A few months later, we received a letter from my grandmother on my father’s birthday. She was known for her perfect handwriting; however, this letter conveyed a completely different message. The words were written with great difficulty on the postcard and resembled the scribbles of a child. It was not what she wrote, but how she wrote it that disturbed us. The thought of her uncomfortably sitting at a table, enduring the physical pain that cancer imparted to her body, and painstakingly writing my father a letter really hurt him. Making a phone call to India was very difficult in those days, and by the time my father got through, all he could do was cry.
After my grandmother passed away, every comfort in my father’s life pinched him. The death of a loved one is much easier to bear with closure; unfortunately he did not get any. If he had known earlier or seen her lifeless body he would have received the visual confirmation of her passing. Grieving as a healing process is not acceptable for a man, as a result of which he was never able to heal. The only dream of his mother’s that he could fulfill was to move to India. He asked us numerous times if that is what we wanted to do. I was too young to help him in the decision making process, and could only feel what he felt, so I replied in the affirmative. My mother and brother replied in the affirmative every time they were asked and we moved to India.
I watched my father re-adjust to a country he had left behind sixteen years ago. It was not an easy job to do. He missed the discipline and orderliness of Canada, but he refused to give up. He believed that anything could be accomplished with a positive attitude and so did I. I enjoyed my popularity at school. Back in those days there were very few people who returned to India, especially Patna, and the girls at school were proud to have a Canadian girl in their class. They were curious, enthusiastic and wanted to learn French. I got to know my cousins much better than I ever did before, and realized that we weren’t so different after all. I gradually developed a strong study ethic, because I became conscious of my reputation, and I also learnt that academics were very important in my family. One day when I came back from school, I went upstairs to see my father who had returned from a trip to our village. I will never forget the look of satisfaction that I saw on his face. In spite of having typhoid, he was happy about all of the work that he had done in the village.
As the years rolled by my father became adept at dealing with people in Patna. He built three apartment complexes in his lifetime: one for his family, one for his Uncle’s family and one for my mother’s family. He was proud of the fact that I was able to adjust to a different culture and did well in University even though I was on my own in another city. I learnt that higher studies were better abroad. Looking for a suitable boy for marriage became a new project for my father. I got married, moved to California, and gradually re-adjusted into the culture that I was born into. My father missed me, as any father misses a daughter who has moved away to establish a home of her own. I missed the long conversations that I had with my father every morning while he had his tea. But for me, life was new and exciting, with plenty of opportunities to tap into, whereas for him life became bleak. After I had children, I was overwhelmed with maternal responsibilities. I became aggressive, outspoken and very independent, and my father felt that I did not need him anymore. During my trips to India, I spent most of my time running after my children, as opposed to sitting down and having meaningful conversations with my father, which we both missed. I wanted to tell my father to have patience, that one day when my children were older, we would be able to talk to each other the way we used to. I wanted to tell him that I never outgrew him and that I still needed and loved him, but I never did.
I received a phone call late one afternoon. My father’s surgery was successful and he was going back home. In my mind, the worst was over. The phone rang four times after which the answering machine went off. As soon as I picked up the phone I heard incoherent voices in a background of incessant chaos, along with my own voice on the answering machine, as if I had received a call from a mental asylum. I began to get irritated and was about to hang up when I heard crying. The voice sounded familiar and a fear gripped my heart. All I could hear was the pounding of my heart and two little words “…no more…” which my sister-in-law said between whimpers. “What are you saying?!” I screamed at her in exasperation, “It’s not possible!!” “Yes, Didi…” she said meekly while I threw the phone away as if doing so could reverse everything that had happened. I felt the weight of the whole world on my head as I sat down on the ground moaning and rocking myself. I started pulling out my hair when my husband asked me what happened. I looked at him as if nothing in the world mattered anymore. “Pick up the phone…” I managed to say as my hair was still clenched in my fists. Gradually the realization of my father’s passing filled my whole being with grief. Every ounce of my body ached with the pain of being left alone and deserted. I felt as if my whole world had turned upside-down. I rocked myself while wondering what to do. Suddenly, I felt as if I needed to see my father one last time, before his face vanished from the surface of the earth. But he was cremated before I could get there and I never got my closure.
After my father passed away, I understood the grief he felt when his mother passed away. His grief was suppressed, just like my grandmother’s, and I felt that I had opened up to three generations of unresolved grief. I decided that I needed to resolve it before I pass away, so that it doesn’t pass on to my children. I think about it, write about it and cry whenever I need to, in order to heal, and I am better today than I was a year ago. After the passing of a loved one it is normal to feel a void. The void says, “You are alone.” It hurts like a physical pain which is very real and not a figment of the imagination. The world appears to be a shallow, materialistic, transient place with no sustenance. Dependability on objects seen today vanishes because a particular face has vanished forever. The nurturing of every relationship seems futile, because the outcome of each one is separation. The heart which has learned to love also learns that it must grieve one day for every individual that it has embraced. But there is more than the eye can see in the spiritual world. I cannot see my father, but I know he is there. I don’t know which world he is in, but I know he can hear me. My heart says, “I never outgrew you and I always loved and needed you. I would not be the person I am today if it weren’t for you. I don’t regret any of your decisions because every hardship I endured led me to a new path of self-discovery. Every life experience made me wiser and stronger. Thank-you for the unique life you gave me. Some souls are never meant to part and certain relationships are timeless. You were my confidante, my mentor, my emotional pillar, the only human being in the world who knew me and loved me for what I am…you were my father…and I will always, always love you.”