Comfort and Grief

Six years ago, today (28th September, 2005) my mother passed away. Losing a parent - I had always thought (since I was child, for as long as I can remember) that that was the worst thing that could happen and it was. However that sunny September afternoon when Amma died I experienced peace and comfort that I had never imagined possible; that even is a little incredible. But I did. I experienced what I always recall a falling into the cushioning warmth of God’s embrace. I always complain that I don’t experience God as palpably as I would like, looking back if that isn’t a tangible experiencing of God, I don’t know what else can be.

That being said, I would be lying if I claimed that I haven’t experienced grief on account of my mother’s loss and that somehow I have been spared that experience that is all too natural and human; because I do. I feel today a grief so crushing that I can hardly breathe. I can’t speak a few sentences about my mother without melting into a pool of tears. I don’t know what people are talking about when they say, “Time heals” or “We learn to cope.” For in my experience I grieve my mother’s going away more with each passing day. There is so much I want to tell her, fill her in on the trivial and momentous detail that is my life. I want to hear her wise counsel on all that confounds and baffles. I feel no great comfort tonight while I wait for the short-lived numbness that sleep provides.

Perchance, “morn shall tearless be.”

The Luxury of Boredom

Contrary to the busyness of most, my days are so spent in quietude and repose of routine that I have often complained about lacking the feverishness of excitement and exhilaration. There have been many an evening when I have waxed eloquent about the seeming emptiness of the dull hours that stretch before me like an empty road into the ever receding horizon. But lately I have had an encounter that has caused me to see more clearly as if scales have fallen off my eyes.

Recently I read an article in The Economist, “Wars Overlooked Victims” and it narrated the horrors of war like I had never heard it before. I was so sickened that I had to read something else to take those horrifying and deeply disturbing images from my mind (for words do paint a picture that is indelible). Here I was unable to stomach the mere reading about what is a reality for countless women, children and men.

I just turned our television set off after watching the news on BBC. Video footage of bleeding men and fire trucks rolling like a juggernaut on people. And I can't seem to silence the poignant plea of a man who says he just wants a better life. In the tired look of a bandaged young man; in the melancholic image of a woman leaving the refugee camp to get a pail of drinking water not really knowing if she would return without being hurt or much worse raped or killed, I see the longing for a day spent in quietude and the comfort of the restfulness of routine; Yes, even what I complained as emptiness.

I wish and pray that they have the luxury of what I glibly call boredom.