Dear reader,
I do not have adequate words to explain the last two months. I wrote the previous post to commemorate Diwali, the festival of lights. Along came the universe to blow the lamps out, leaving life in twilight. If you think I'm being histrionic, don't read any further.
It's been a little over 60 days since my father died suddenly, likely a victim of Covid's long-term effects. Over 10 months his lungs deteriorated swiftly and silently, culminating in a 23-hour stay in the ICU, a phone call to me from the hospital at 3.23am, a 5-minute drive during which I prayed he was okay and the one infinite moment of seeing him in bed even as the doctor broke the news of a massive cardiac arrest.
A sequence of numbers marking time; a diadem of black pearls weighing my head down since 3.30am on the morning of 29th October 2022.
My father was human and god knows he had his faults. But it was impossible to remain passive when facing the crowd at the cremation; a sea of humanity whose lives he'd touched and made better in myriad ways. From aged senior ex-colleagues to junior students he was teaching; relatives and friends who'd known my father in his youth to society residents who only knew the principled disciplinarian from committee meetings.
In the middle of this human maelstrom were two people unable to come to terms with the loss, the notion that he was gone forever, leaving us to be true adults for the first time. Some of you may scoff at this idea but if you have even one parent alive, then you are still a child to someone, with all the baggage that brings. The sibling and I are adrift in this world, our compasses now gone, a finality that is hard to believe, let alone accept.
When people ask how I am, I talk about living one day at a time. But I'm unsure if this is living or existing. My emotions have transformed from numbness to a desert-like barrenness. It was partially responsible for costing me a relationship and has stripped away meaning from my professional life. But, I don't think well-wishers want to hear all that. So, I take cover behind banal words and cliched catchphrases.
Still, to those who reached out, called and checked in on me - thank you.
Work is a saga in itself with the culture deteriorating steadily through the year, leaving me with questions about what I should be doing in 2023. Not this, my heart whispers. I should allow my brains to figure out the future, though its hard to be confident about a noggin that's turned into scrambled eggs for now.
I thought, hoped and wished 2022 would be a great year for me. For a while it really seemed like it would be; a new work profile out of advertising and a new relationship. I thought the tide had finally turned. How could I have been so naive? 2022 turned out to be the mother of all reality checks. I just turned 40 but struggle to carry the fatigue of someone much older.
There's more to convey but as I said at the beginning, there are no adequate words.
Forgive me if I can't wish you a happy 2023. All I'll say is make of the days what you will.
Song for the moment: Do it again - Steely Dan
Comments
Dealing with the death of a parent (or aging parents in general) is something that we don’t have any real response to; not even by way of banal psychobabble like we have for other situations like death of a pet, a partner, a relationship, perhaps even a child. Even spiritualism etc. does a pretty lousy job at helping us properly process this part of the human experience and come out the other end with anything resembling a sense of hope.
That said, I do think that there’s something to be said about honestly framing your new, seemingly vast and empty reality in a way that doesn’t leave you totally debilitated, hopeless, and hollow going forward. I abhor even thinking of the term "silver lining" in this context, but there is a very microscopic yet important “upside” in knowing that there is absolutely nothing you have to fear in life now. Its like the universe has played its strongest card against you, and yet here you stand…damaged, destroyed, hopeless, but secure in the knowledge that it truly can’t get any worse. You're basically bullet proof now. I hope you are able to reframe your grief into a sense of liberation. Perhaps vacuous and a deeply unsatisfying liberation, but something that you’ll come to appreciate a bit more than you can right now, over time.
I hope that makes some sense, but I totally understand if it doesn't. Be well and keep at it, bud.