Monday, February 08, 2010

To let go and yet love so much...

I miss this lady who was strong and wise and fun and all things warm and wonderful. My grandmother. She has been gone a month now yet in my mind she lingers on. Sentimental do you call me? But really, on a day to day basis, I do not wallow in sadness and despair... nor does anybody else who loves her. Simply because that is not the way to be. If a life has been well and fully lived, you cherish the memories of that person and go on with the rest of your life with the utmost zest. What does hurt and hurt bad though is that sudden moment in time when I think of her and it strikes me anew that someone I love is never going to be mine anymore... those half-written but never sent letters, those many conversations that were yet to be had, old stories that I was going to listen to some day. Stuff I want to tell her... so many times to come in my life that I want her to know, to be there with me all through. And it is only at those freakish moments that I cannot help but let the tears fall. At all other times, I am strong. Some things you just gotta learn to live with and smile through because the person you are thinking of deserves all those smiles :)

She was an amazing lady. If a gal needed a role model, she would have been the ideal one. Not that she would have pointed herself out as a perfect person. Constant improvement, constant progress, constant effort. Determination and the strongest and most resilient will I have ever come across. So much wisdom gathered through a lifetime of experience. Makes me wonder if that is the way of life, to learn all along and yet to take a lot of it along with you. She was a teacher and her students must remember facets of her that I must have never seen. To me she was this person that was tied in with this place.  A place that felt like home always. Maybe because I spent a while growing up there. Being her eldest grandchild made me feel selfishly special. Like she would always love me that little bit more than everybody else. 

For me, that she was a wonderful human being is manifested in the fact that she brought up her own children to be some of the finest people I have ever known. Incredibly loving, strong, sensitive, yet upfront and honest and each unique. That she let each one of them be the independent person they could be, never let them be fettered and still made sure there were strong bonds between them... tells of the person she was. No wonder my grandpa loved her so much! Never a person to let anybody take her decisions for her, she took in the best of all the worlds she could visit and created her own best version of it. It worked well enough for her. Or so it always seemed to me.

There are so many facets of this lovely lady who has been an important part of my life... her teaching, her experiences, her people, her plants and the mad love she felt for them... this list can be unending. So much I can say, and yet so much I don't know about her life. I realized only after she was gone that there were so many people in her life, so many untold tales, and they are probably lost to me forever now. It is funny how one person can have been enmeshed in the lives of so many others... may be that is the essence of being a human being. You must reach out and meet new people, let them into your life and become a part of theirs. That way, you live just one life but you get the experiences of so many... Like living a million lives all at once.

10 comments:

maneesh said...

:( I lost 3 out of 4 grandparents in quick succession when I was kinda young, when grief is not something that comes naturally but is something that just seems to be in the air. My sorrow was more for my mother not being able to see her mother anymore and was based more on how much i loved my mother than on how much i loved my grandmother.

I realized many years later what the loss meant to me when i saw my grandfather in a dream, spoke at length like one often does in dreams, wept profusely, and woke up with no memory of what he/ i said and feeling much better suddenly.

What can I say, hang in there.

P.S. : No idea why I put this here, just felt like it.

Pushkaraj said...

It was my pleasure to stare at the picture you painted of your grandmother..

Unknown said...

Really nice post.Touched the heart immediately. Some people are just more than ordinary and it's a good luck to know them so closely. Loved the way youy have put it.

Mukta said...

@ maneesh: that's a different perspective indeed, to feel the pain coz someone else is hurt and not just you.

@pushkya: painted pictures? :) nice one.

@ swati: i agree, its incredible luck to meet the most awesome people in your life. Or at the very least, think that the people you have actually met are all awesome in some ways :)

Alpana Lele said...

It was touching.
Grandmothers do have a special place in ones heart. But it is important to realize its depth. And to be able to express what you feel about that relationship. These memories will always be with you to guide you in difficult times ...

Sudi said...

Well, what can I say.. Somethings are just left unuttered.. Especially when you lose someone very close to your heart !! I can tell you one thing.. How much one tries to get over the fact, you just cannot. I am telling this out of experience. 12 years and still I sometimes have tears in my eyes when I know I had to share something important with my mother and she is not there. Mothers and Grandmothers do have a really special place.

So, all I can say is to remember all the good times you shared with her. Those memories are ones to cherish forever !!!

Bastet said...

IBeautiful post, Mukta... I too have felt the same, and, have those freakish moments which make me want to cry when I remember my grandfather ... it is like the Parikrama song - "the ache is long gone, but the 'never' keeps staring along' ..... :(

pRasad said...

Soo well written.. especially last para where you have mentioend about reaching to other people and be a part of their lives.

Also, the way you have depicted the picture of your grandmother, I must say an urge to meet the lady is almost irresistible.

@Manish,
I can relate with it. When my grandpa past away,my sorrow was for my mother as i was barely 10 and never seen her cry like that.

Anonymous said...

i shared the same sorrow for the same the same person and i feel just the same

Mukta said...

oh tanvi! of course! and i know that we shall miss her just so much and remember her with a smile always :)