The story in between.

 

When you lose something so big from your life is when your true grit comes under real test. Not only does it leave you depleted of your strength and hope and happiness, it simply throws you into an ocean of uncertainty without making an allowance for the fact that you don’t even know how to swim. But I guess that’s life. It’s full of nothing but tough, grueling, amazing uncertainties; it’s always going to be that way. It always was.

So when it does happen and when we do get flung by its power, what do we do? Learn to swim? Try and stay afloat? Try to hold on to anything that might keep us from drowning? Cry for a lifeboat? Or do we simply surrender to the invincible force of the tide and let our soul fall away? I think all these options require courage and an incredible amount of human effort (except for maybe the last one where you let yourself drown, but even that takes courage; no effort perhaps).  If you are lucky, a lifeboat might just cross by. But the irony of life usually is that the lifeboat is moving in the opposite direction and does not hear you.

The kind of place I feel I am caught up in right now after mom left is pretty much bang on.  It’s the exact feeling of trying to hold my head above the water, gasping every breath, constantly getting pulled by the undercurrent. When I think of it, it’s astonishing that life would work under such a sadistic sense of humor. On one hand, I mean, I was losing this person who simply meant EVERYTHING to me (in every definition of the word ‘everything’). I knew I was losing her and that I couldn't do anything to stop that and on the other, I had this new person, basically a newborn and practically still a stranger to me, who smiled at me in wonder while I wept in despair. It was like life’s way of telling me ‘you can’t have it all, baby.’ But I wanted it all. I was not asking for the moon and the sun to show up at the same time. I just wanted my mom. I wanted her by my side as I was entering the big world of motherhood myself. I wanted her with me on that ride. Just a regular, simple, amorous, dhal rice-eating family, that’s all I wanted. I thought that was every individual’s fundamental need.

I thought that’s what everyone had. I thought that’s the way life worked – to be a child, to grow up, to make your choices, to build your future and all along the way, your parents were going to be there for you, watching your back, holding you from behind, taking care of you, loving you like no other and alive! BIG MISTAKE !