Realisations of a Bereaved Mother

Dear Aabi

Days pass without you, and I constantly yearn to hold you. I experience pain, emotionally, physically, and in all aspects how one could feel pain, missing you every moment of every single day. My ears and my eyes ache to hear you, look at you, and the constant urge to tend to my baby reflects as a claustrophobic, uncomfortable feeling I am unable to express. The incompleteness is everlasting. I miss you, your sister misses you every second, and your papa has closed himself up as if holding you so close and not wanting to share even the thoughts about you with anyone. I wish you were aware, somehow, of the love and thoughts that are entirely for you, of you.

As time goes by, I look for distractions to occupy my mind constructively. I understand that I need to get back to work. In the process of trying to look for work, I have new realisations. I am here today, wanting to share these with you, my darling baby. I am sure parents, siblings, families, and mostly mothers who have lost their precious little ones will relate somehow. This might just bring us closer, in pain, in their absence, and in their loving memories.

New Realizations

This world is complete in its own sense. With people from all backgrounds, creations of all types, and the ongoing process of it all. Everything moves, and whatever is still, perishes. Within this completeness is an incompleteness that not all see. Some of these people around, who contribute towards a complete, are probably themselves incomplete, broken, or carrying themselves not as a whole, but as a million shattered pieces. Yet, nothing in the wholeness of the universe is affected at the least. Not our pain, not our loss, not our happiness, and not our lives have any impact on whether things should keep moving or pause for a moment to acknowledge.

With everything in motion, I feel ever so insignificant without my child. No matter how social we humans become, our entire world is always only our home. We just don't realise it in all its senses until it crumbles. Some occasions and moments bind us to other families, and we feel our home is growing. But the pain of losing your own loved one is only yours to feel. We don't even wish for anyone else to experience it. It is almost like not wanting to share the love and the feeling of owning the one we lose.

Another striking realisation that has come to me after losing my beautiful Aabi is how soft and kind the world is for mothers with little children. It is an extremely delightful experience to be out in the world with a baby in your arms or a pram by your side. Everyone around you seems gentle, loving, welcoming, helpful, bright, and happy with you. They share in the joy of witnessing a little person growing and doing amazing things. The loss of this child is so devastating that the mother, who has lost her whole world, witnesses all this crash. The gentleness and the love transform into sympathy and support. All the brightness and joy of the world vanish. Our child leaving us not only creates an everlasting void and emptiness, shutting our eyes to the whole world.

No one wants to witness pain every time they are in the company of anyone grieving the loss of a child. No one wants to add to the pain, when despite the tears while talking about my child, the pain is felt even more when realising my child's absence in the presence of everyone. I have realised that not only was the day of losing my child the most painful, but trying to belong in a world where my baby is absent is even more painful. The struggle to be a part of the community, which is my safe place, is pictured in my mind with all of us together, and not without my little child. So, this incompleteness, which is to be the completeness, is like a vicious cycle that engulfs me every time, realising how it is to be, whether I agree or not.

Ironically, the world and the universe are still complete, still functioning, and still a happy and safe place for countless others, and I just have to carry my incompleteness inside me, contributing to the holistic completeness. How torn is a life that has to continue with this level of understanding? I cannot imagine any solace in this thought.

Realising that unless you belong again, you are defeating the very purpose of the pain inflicted. Also,  realising that no matter what you go through every day, and what you do, your contribution to the world around you is negligible. It all ultimately boils down to how you carry it inside and what you offer outside.

The society, community, and the world will include whatever is present, in whatever sense of it, whole or partial, and keep moving, ever so complete.

Dear Aabi, I say this today, and I have meant this since always, for always, you made us complete, and without you, we remain incomplete forever. Not that we don't have you in us, but that you are not here to take it all from us.

For all those beautiful people who have been taken away from this world, you leave us ever so incomplete, ever so broken, and yet are amongst us, making us complete in your own special ways.

Dedications to you from the heart, mind, and all around will keep flowing, making us complete with you forever.

If you are another incomplete yet complete mother, father, sibling, or family, just be present for as long as it has to be and allow this world to feel its wholeness through it all. All of it is our dedication to our loved ones, within and beyond.