Closure

For three days, I‘ve been watching the preparations with the shock and horror of an animal caught unawares. I need some warmth, some love. I desperately want to have Dad comfort me, Mom caress me and for me to strengthen them. But I know that I’ll have to control myself. This battle is personal and we’ll have to face it alone. So, I stand a little distance away, watching and waiting for the final moment.



Though the weeping has stopped; I know that it’s only a matter of time before it begins again. Occasional sniffs and silent tears gently punctuate the overpowering silence. And the weather...as if it wants to say goodbye too, is at its agonizing best-completely overcast, incessant rain and a cold that like a sword is piercing right through the soul. But, I know that this is nothing. The people here, in this small, obscure graveyard, carry in their hearts a weather, gloomier than what they are witnessing now. Or ever will.



‘Closure is the most important part of healing, pumpkin”, Dad had once told me as he had pushed the hair away from my bewildered face. ‘And that’s why mummy needs to travel so far away to see Jay Aunty’s family’. Mom, sadder than I had ever seen her, had tried in vain to smile, to shield me, her little girl, from the pain that had been hers. Her usually sparkling eyes were dull, lost in the memories of a friendship that had been almost as old as her. I had only known Mom as the funny, loud, piggy backing on Dad fireball and to have seen her like this had scared my little six year old heart.



So, forgetting her pain for a while, Mom had spent time cuddling me and telling me how much she was going to miss me and Dad. And as responsible parents, they had given me my first explanation of death. “Everyone will have to go through this, baby. Remember Grandma last year? Remember your little hamster? What? Yes, mummy and daddy too, but don’t worry, honey, not for a long time!” After much hugging and kissing, Mom had finally prepared to fly to her hometown to say goodbye to her best friend, Jay, who had lost her life to cancer. According to convention, she had gone to share the pain. But, even she had known that it was for closure.



This is for closure too, alright.



There is so much sadness, anger and even some amount of fear. But worse than anything I have ever experienced is the grief. Like salt on a gaping wound, it sprinkles itself when least expected and brings with it spasms of anger, and sometimes a numbness so obvious and hollow, that it scares me with its lifelessness.



Every time a leaf rustles or a foot shuffles, a searing pain is going through me reminding me of what is imminent. I want to cry, but I can’t. I am like a spectator witnessing an accident, desperately wanting to help, but rooted to the ground in shock and horror. I wish someone would speak, say something, just anything....everything is so deathly silent, yet, why do I hear the cacophony of a million silent voices? I am scared.



Mom is sitting under a tree, exhausted, almost physically willing the pain to escape through her tears. But the tears aren’t coming. Her spirit is weakened, ready to collapse, like her body. Her sister, my aunt, beside herself with grief, is holding Mom tightly. In vain she is trying to infuse in her some of her own warmth and her desire to live, to survive. Yes, even I’m afraid that in her grief, Mom too might turn cold and lifeless like the body in the coffin, about to be buried.



Dad’s strong arms are folded about him, overseeing in silence the preparatory work for the burial. He seems to be there, yet not. I want to be there for him, just like he has, for me, a million times.



Like the time he had found the cigarettes in my pocket. I had been scared, yet, in the fallacy of my youth and the rebellion of adolescence, I had even been ready to ‘walk out’ if Dad had even as much as raised his voice. But Dad had been a gentleman about it. That weekend, he had bought home a Nintendo –Wii. I had laughed. Undaunted, every single day, he had requested me to join him and despite my reluctance and acerbic remarks, he had continued to motivate me and had taught me to focus, to better myself. Dad didn’t know it then, but I had been experimenting drugs. But after this, the sheer guilt of disappointing him had me choose to give up both the drugs and the friends who were encouraging it.



Dad….I wish I could hug you. But I myself am broken, crushed. The blind can’t lead the blind. For him, the reality of the cemetery contradicts immensely with the comfort of denial. Like a stabbed person, unsure of the blood flowing out of his wound, he is in shock, beyond the pain. So he stands rooted to the ground, staring at the freshly dug grave, looking lost and worse, hopeless.



The gray day seems like night. However, the rain has slowed in intensity. There seems to be a strange, shameless hope. Hope of a better weather entwined with the agony of the finality. Suddenly, my mother, with the anguish of one losing her own life, wails.



The moment has arrived.



The coffin is being lifted. With a mixture of reverence and fear, it’s being slowly lowered to its final resting place. And, as if to pay its last respects, in a final burst of adieu, a painful goodbye kiss, the final embrace before the journey, the sun shines for one brief moment and sunlight falls on the coffin.



And I watch myself being buried.