On Losing a parent
Losing a parent is always catastrophic, but especially so for children between the ages of seven to fifteen. Those younger than seven are blissfully unaware of the concept of death, even managing to forget the dead person in a short time. Handling the seven to fifteen years is tricky. One wrong word or sentence can trigger thoughts in their over-active minds which might become devastating for them. I remember how irritated my daughter would get with people who came to sympathise, to give condolences. It is confounding for grown-ups as to how to philosophise to such a young child about life's cycle of birth-death-rebirth. The enormity of the tragedy hits them after a few days when they realise that the deceased is never going to return, never going to share their joys, their achievements, their everyday lives. My son's plaintive cry ".....but I want my father to be with me. Ma please ask God to send him back. Ask him to take an old father instead"..... still rings in my years from time to time, even after sixteen years. What words could I say to my children which would make it a little easier for them to bear this. My eleven year daughter was in a fever for eight months (for no clinical reason) because she bottles her emotions & hardly ever cries. The impact of seeing her father suffer for two years due to cancer & chemotherapy was bad enough. Death, no matter how anticipated, is always a shock.
So how did we cope?
Firstly, I hid all the music cassettes & CDs which their father would listen to practically every evening. I packed & delivered all his 'good' clothes to a Senior Citizen's Home run by nuns. This was done in their absence. Of the remaining clothes, they were allowed to keep one tee shirt each. The rest were washed, ironed & neatly packed in a plastic bag by the three of us & with grave faces they handed these over to the sweeper saying "yeh hamaare Baba ke hain" (these are our father's).
Weekends were especially difficult. As an outlet for their emotions I encouraged them to write down whatever they wanted to say to their father in an inland letter (my son would make a drawing on the last page instead of writing) and we would actually walk to the post office & drop it in the post box, with the address "To Baba, C/o God, In heaven". Ridiculous as it might have seemed to the postal staff, the peace on the kid's faces after this made it worth it. We carried on with this for about a year! Thereafter a notebook for each of them served as a diary & an expression of their thoughts - in words or drawings. We made it a point not to stay at home or go to anybody's home in the evening. Twilight is the time when one feels most depressed, so we would go to a garden where they could play and later to the 'ground' to play basket ball & volley ball.
As the surviving parent, the "why" was the most difficult to answer. "Why our father when everyone else has theirs", "why did God need to take only him specifically when there are so many oldies still around", "is there really a God? I do'nt think so, otherwise he would'nt have done this even after we prayed to Him everyday"(these from my wise, resentful daughter), "So why could'nt God keep him for a few days & then send him back" (this from my innocent son).
The most painful was "what was done with his body after his soul had left it". The thought of their father being burnt evoked visuals too terrible to bear & were a cause for many a hideous nightmare for the longest time.
A confounding one from my brave daughter to which I did'nt know how to react was "I know he is around here, he will never leave us, I can feel his presence but he is not WITH us". And another from my son"when I close my eyes, I see him but when I open them he disappears. So where does he go?" Since at the time we were in bed looking at the stars through the open window, I had the brainwave to say that their father had become a star and all the stars in the sky are somebody's loved ones. So they all gather in the sky at night to tell us that they are very much with us, even though not on earth. To their query - "how can we know which one of them is OUR Baba", I told them the one that seems to shine more brightly than the others is yours & that if they keep looking at it they will find it blinking at them, as if smiling. That is the signal he is sending them. Each star shines the brightest for his children, so that they know he is still with them. It will shine more brightly if you are happy & it will look dim if you are sad, because he does not want your'll to be sad.
This story worked wonders and they sighed & slept peacefully through the night, without, for once, living through a nightmare.
The purpose for sharing this after 16 yrs. is with so many young people dying nowadays - whether at the border or at war or in a building collapse or accident or heart attack, I hope this piece will help someone cope with their children's grief.
Bless them.
