Divya Gaur from Delhi was devastated when she lost her mother to brain tumour and could not attend the last rites in Bhopal due to the stringent Covid lockdown. Here she pens down her life changing feelings.
No matter how we prepare ourselves, losing a loved one is never easy. One is never ever prepared to let a parent go. When I lost my father I was away. I reached only 3 hours after he went. I could not say goodbye, not to him at least. Though it happens with many people who don’t live in the same city as their ageing parents, I somehow felt I should have tried harder to reach him earlier. But I forgave myself with a silent resolve that I will not let this happen again. When the time comes, I will make sure to be at my mother’s side. I knew from experience that nothing is worth living with this regret.
My mother left us on the 26th of April 2020, a month into the ridiculously stringent lockdown that India was undergoing. I was away again. And I stayed away for a whole month. Not only did I not see my mother for the last time or say goodbye, I could not hold my sister’s hand as she lit the pyre alone. Almost six months after it happened, it still feels surreal.
We all deal with loss in our own different ways. Didi and I have been devastated; shocked at the way it happened. She keeps telling me it wasn’t my fault. I tried, my friends and family tried, we carefully explored each option but there was no way I could have reached on time. Mum had to be sent away alone.
Considering how my mother was fond of a fanfare, it was all the more heart-breaking for us that she went with just 10 people to bid her farewell. I have always felt that she trusted me to take care of her. She felt she was responsible for the whole family and I was responsible for her. I didn’t mind, I believed it too.
Covid and related exigencies mean many things to many people. To me the lockdown began in such a way that it numbed me to everything else that was transpiring around me.
Keeping Mom’s memory alive
I have tried to drown myself into many activities. Raising funds for migrants, arranging school and college fees for those in need, trying to establish a scholarship in my mother’s name and other stuff that I know she wanted me to do. I’m trying to keep the fire she had in her alive by being productive. If there is one thing my mother hated, it was to waste oneself in unproductive pursuits. I’m trying to keep the fire alive.
Its strange how I thought I will not miss her… and I don’t!
Our mother was one who needed to feel useful. I have seen her literally rise from the ashes so many times. When they were taking hours in the OT trying to get rid of her brain tumour (that she diagnosed herself), during many of Papa’s illnesses and all our family crises and so many more. After Papa left us, I feared she will die of a broken heart. But she survived and how! I know for sure that in spite of all odds she had never been depressed because she felt useful. She made a difference to the world, to the people in it including her daughters.
She made her girls strong, independent, progressive, fighters of women. For her, we were very important. But only as important as her patients, her students, her lectures, her conferences, her research. And that’s what makes her my hero.
She was way ahead than her times, my mother... or she wouldn’t have told me ‘if you can’t find a man to marry, either find one to live with or adopt a child’. I launched a brand instead – a toy brand called EcoJoy.
Mom’s biggest gift
She never gave up. Whenever I feel life is expecting too much out of me I think about how come she never missed picking us from the school bus and making fresh rotis for us every single afternoon in spite of all that she had on her to do list.
Today, I look back and wonder if it mattered that she gave me a strawberry lollipop instead of an orange one. But it definitely would have mattered if she gave up her professional life for any reason. The love she had for her work is her biggest gift to me. I know now that it kept her going all these years.
I don’t have her recipe book or her family jewels but I have her story I love to tell the world. And what a story it is.... of breaking stereotypes, fighting taboos, proving excellence, of striving, of achieving and of inspiring.
Goodbye Mom
Even when she was around I didn’t spend half of the time pining over not having enough chat sessions with her that I spent remembering what she would have done in a particular situation. I didn’t remember her when I ate a nice tasting dish or see a particular style of clothing but I did remember her every time I am faced with a real dilemma, a crisis or pressure. I knew I won’t miss her when she was gone... Really. And that’s because she has taught me what it means to be a woman of the world! One that was sent to the world for a reason and will go when her work is done.
I am not a believer and I know there is no life after death. But the thought that she is with Papa now gives me peace. So I am allowing myself this indulgence. My scientist mother would not have approved but I am trying to be easy on myself. The best way for me to remember her is to be proud of her. I have to be useful after all.
