Gone But Unforgotten

Ages ago, when I was still young, I read these lines somewhere and they have since stayed with me:

Your memories a treasure no one can steal

Your absence a heartache no one can heal.

Birth, growth, and death are part of the natural process that we know as life. Within our lifespan, we see lives taking birth and grow. We ourselves produce new lives. We also witness and experience the passing away of many lives; some related to us, some unrelated. Some dear and some not so dear.

My father passed away at the age of 93 and I did experience grief. However, it was when my mother-in-law passed away when she was 72 years of age that I understood grief.

My father was old, had lived a full and fertile life and must have died with a sense of fulfillment. In fact, when he was put on a ventilator in the hospital, we (my sisters and brother) asked the doctor to take it off and allow my father to go in peace.

I have always loved and admired my mother-in-law as a most gritty woman. She was among the millions of Indians who poured into India from Pakistan after the partition in 1947. She was a child then and her family had to start their lives all over again in their new homeland.

She was married to a man who worked for the Indian Railways at a young age. They had a daughter first (presently my wife), then another, then another, and then, another. Four daughters were born but the search for a son had not yet ended. It did end when finally they had a son. By that time, however, Kusum (my mother-in-law) was on the verge of losing her husband to cancer. He had already lost an arm but the cancer was spreading fast. He breathed his last in 1978.

The challenge of raising the family of five children ( the eldest was 19 years old and the youngest barely three) fell heavily on Kusum’s frail shoulders. But she did not wilt under the pressure. Instead, she rose to the occasion and fought with adversity to provide her children with everything that they needed. She was employed with the Railways on compassionate grounds.

I admire her not for the fact that she was a woman and had to undergo adverse circumstances in her life. So many others face worse situations and survive. I admire her for taking the challenges head-on and without seeking any help or support from anyone. She was a proud woman, determined not to be cowed down by anything. She would not take a single paisa from friends or relatives even when she was faced with a severe shortage of resources.

I was always astounded by the fact that despite limited finances available to her, she always seemed to have enough to give. She was the eternal giver while I have seen people always eager to take and reluctant to give. Even till the sudden end, she kept giving, and I do not remember any of us in the family ever spending money on her, even her hospital bills!

She was a diabetic but I know that she hardly cared for herself. She had problems and disappointments but I have always seen her smiling. She was active and would travel on her own when her children refused to accompany her. She was fiercely independent and chose to live in the house that her husband had bought when he was alive. She would be reluctant to live with her daughters because tradition dictated that daughters are “paraya dhan”, the treasure of some other (husband) and not the parents’. She would stay with her son briefly but was not willing to go with him when he went overseas to settle down. She preferred to be alone and stand on her own two feet, which were getting weaker by the day.

She was always in and out of hospitals and we used to joke that she enjoyed a bed in a railway hospital than one at home. So, when she fell ill and was taken to a local nursing home, we were sure that she will be out in a few days.

Her blood sugar had shot up to alarming levels but was soon brought down with medicines. She seemed cheerful and happy when the doctors told her she will be discharged the next day. But fate had different plans and she suffered a heart stroke and died that very night in the hospital.

Yes, her death came as a shock to me because I did not expect her to die so soon. I had not realized that I had shared a very special relationship with her, apart from being her first son-in-law. You understand some relationships only when the person is gone. We had shared a lot of good, bad and indifferent times together, me and my mother-in-law. She trusted me and used to tell me a lot many things about herself and her problems. She had many frustrations, setbacks, and unresolved issues, and I always used to ask her to forget negatives and focus on positives. She had not only fulfilled her responsibilities for her children but had gone way beyond to do it all on her own. Everyone benefitted from her and she owed nothing to anybody. What better life could one have, I used to tell her.

Kusum left this world with her head high and proud. I can never forget her.