THE UNWANTED

Dear Aabi

Here, another month went by, the last month of the year, December. Another month without you. The year that held for me both beauty and horror. The year you began to bloom like a beautiful, bright sunflower. The year in which new words in your toddler's vocabulary amazed me every moment. The year when you became stronger, bolder, fun, and fierce, like a model two-year-old. The year when all emotions touched you, and you touched all of us in ways we had never been touched. But also the year that was your final. The year when our happiness expired. The year that introduced me to a pain I wish no one ever experiences in a lifetime. The year that has stripped me of all that I thought life was.

Reflections

As the world around me prepares for a new start to a year, I understand everything a little differently now. I am unable to see the concept of a calendar, of time. I am looking at this year ending, or at a new year beginning, just as another moment that passes without you, with so many more lined up ahead, just the same, without you still. I have somehow UN-learned everything I know, and I suppose I am in a space and time where I am forced to learn what I do not want to.

Yes, I want to talk about the most talked-about topic, LIFE. Our teachings begin early. Our parents are our first teachers, followed by our family, grandparents, uncles, aunts, brothers, sisters, and relatives. Lessons we get, gather, and apply from them build our character. Shape us into the humans we become later. We carry our family's love, happiness, and baggage, all inside us, always. Then the ones at school become our official teachers. Countless lessons, teachings, courses, languages, and so much from history help formulate our thoughts, our opinions, and our choices. Further in college and career, we continue to learn endlessly and every day. On top of all this, our religions, gurus, godmen, and not to forget, the written scriptures, add to our very being.

The Unseen Curriculum of Life

So many teachers at every stage bring knowledge in every form. It is unlikely that anyone ever misses all or any one of this. Every single person on this planet is being taught in one way or the other, at all times in their lives. And yet, quite many of us sit through examinations to face the unknown scenarios and questions that shake the very fundamentals of life. Many of us, like my husband, my daughter, my family, and I, are placed in a situation that none of us were ever aware of. No one ever spoke to me, throughout my life years, about how to face the death of my child.

Such horrendousness is just putting this into words, that I fail to imagine anyone trying to teach me or people, about this. Most of what comes is from our scriptures, about death, loss, and the theories around it, including stories of legendary beings, God sent, facing such struggles and surviving them with grace, faith, and strength. All of which somehow fail to deliver amidst the chaos life brings with the loss of our own child. These, after all, come from faith, and faith, for one, falls beyond reach for the one who has seen their child breathe for the very last time, closed them up in a box, and buried them six feet under the ground.

So, no! This is never taught in any school ever. No one had the courage or wisdom to teach any person survival after the loss of their child. Even the doctors, who base their lives on science and facts, do not warn expecting parents of such a situation. But why not? If this is the truth the world lives in and with, why not prepare parents-to-be of the loss simultaneously as they are being prepared for the joy? Why not sensitise people to this possibility?

Living The Honest Unwanted

When we encourage children and people to follow their passions, to do what makes them happy, and to work where their heart finds meaning, why don't we introduce them to the raw realities that they might face? Why did my parents, my teachers, and my guides never teach me, that, no matter what I choose, life will work in ways I can never even dream of? About how and what to do in case I lose my child? How can a reality so brutally true be left to faith, religion, and historical stories? Maybe they were incapable of knowing the weight and impact of such a shock.

Because the reality of how life decides to give you pain you could never imagine, loss you could never get over, and love beyond existence, is all firsthand experience. Facts about, no matter how hard you love, hold, plead, pray, resist, or fight, but life can still become exactly what you never want, are only to be lived and not learned. Every day, someone or the other will repeat that life is uncertain, that love, family, and this life must not to be taken for granted, and that everything can vanish in the blink of an eye. I discretely remember my aunt’s death (in her prime years), from years ago when I was around 11 years old, another of a tragic jolt our family had to endure. I remember all details of that day and that loss, of what my uncle and my cousin brother (only 13 or 14 years of age then and losing his mother) went through, and have been in, since then. I understood it and saw it then too, but i am sure can not comprehend the way they do, every day since.

And yet, all who claim to understand this, which includes a version of me that existed before the dreadful May of 2025, are only capable of KNOWING this. Whereas LIVING THIS SIDE OF THE REALITY IS ANOTHER STORY ALTOGETHER!

Dear Aabi, today, as we are forced to live this reality, time has lost its value. People say it is mighty and that it has power over everything in this universe. However, it seems insignificant, useless, and so micro to us now. Losing you has overpowered time. It seems stagnant now. Life didn't win over our love, joy, and happiness; on the contrary, IT LOST! It lost its beauty, its vibrance, its might, and its most precious little charm: YOU. And this loss, even THE POWERFUL LIFE won't be able to make up for. The randomness of an event that leads to a void so massive is incomprehensible. So much so that even the wisest fail to know it. The unwanted remains the unknown, except for those like us, who live and breathe it every single moment. Yet, even we will fail to share the knowledge and experience of it with a world oblivious of it, luckily, I would say. And only untill they can.

But not a single one of these unwanted moments are without you in them. Every single one now carries a love not known to all. A love so painfully pure and ever so concretely true.

Miss you, darling baby girl.