The aftermath of death...

Today I want to wallow in my grief. It is hurting me more than yesterday. It is not entirely about her passing away or whatever else follows. It has more to do with my lack of care, or heartlessness, or preoccupation or confidence (don’t know how exactly to phrase it because these are contradictory terms) that she will survive, there is nothing to worry about her, that I didn’t go and visit her in her last days. She was always very particular about maintaining a relationship consistently. Probably she went away with a silent complaint that I have defaulted. She doesn’t know about my usual bouts of depression, she knew though that I am busy looking after my mother. But if I could find time to visit her home right after her death, I could have probably found time to see her alive one last time.

Hence this urge to indulge my grief, like I have done never before. I have howled in pain, cried my heart out, blamed people, shouted, stopped eating, stopped reading, became lifeless, so many varied reactions - in earlier occasions. Now, I just let my arms drop, my face loll, my thinking stall for a bit. I know I have to pay my phone bill today. I go to the ebanking site. I painstakingly type in the user id. And then I press enter, the page, it shows me an error like never before, “You have forgotten to enter your password”…you can understand the situation. And I let that continue. Way I used to coax myself on my bossie’s birthday to eat a Dark Passion from CCD, long long after all passions were over, “come on, it’s ok, you should let yourself eat some chocolate and cake, never mind…”

I go on telling myself, things can wait, you be like this…senseless, stupefied, scarcely breathing. But work keeps me going. I try to take out a cheque leaf from the cheque book, it gets torn. I rush to the bank, ask about whether the cheque is still valid, they ask couple of irrelevant questions and allow the cheque through. A Flipkart delivery comes in. I ask for change of 1000 bucks. I am interacting with the general public, I can’t be that dead. I am still living, it is she who is dead, going to be dead, forever.