AN OBITUARY

January 23rd. 5:35 pm.
The cold statistics of a death.
The frantic ringing of the phone and the continuous repeating of details. The passing of news from one person to another. Soon, the steady trickle of mourners. The crying of the women, their red eyes, the hushed whispers of the men outside, their carefully controlled faces….and the heavy silence stretching throughout. A house of death.
The death of my sister.

Slow hours of waiting. Nearing midnight, the cold red flash of the ambulance, and the sudden increase in subdued voices….
They are here…they are here!!!!!
And all eyes turned towards the gate.
My sister comes back home…..
The wailing begins…..

Death gets bound up, in a thousand rituals through the thirteen days that follow. Everybody falls into the cycle of numbing performances, of rituals, of social demands and of collective mourning…..
When the days of ritual mourning will have passed by, life will calls on. It will be a turn to normalcy for most of us and to a broken one for her husband and daughter. Even as they assume a carefully studied normalcy, their lives seem to stretch out before them like a bleak endless road. Or perhaps time should be expected to heal….but how much? And before how long? Could healing be a diminished remembrance?
The death of one who gave their lives and their individual existence, so much of meaning.

Pictures are shown and passed out, stories are told and re-told…..people remember and people recollect. But I had nothing to say, no stories to tell, no contribution to make. For I was without any concrete memories of her, with her. In the limited association I had with her over the phone and over very infrequent meetings there wasn’t much I could salvage by way of memories…but through the days, it was through the stories and through innumerable fragmented memories that she came alive, yet again.
And pictures filled out.
One seeks a justification of death. But none comes. You want to not believe in god, like an act of defiance. And yet somehow somewhere along the day you loose that silent battle with god, or with whatever it is that one believes in.
A few days ago I found some pictures of my sister and her daughter; taken long years back at our grandparent’s house. Candid shots they were and I had seen them a million times before too. They were just a few of those hundreds of pictures one keeps stuffed in albums, envelopes and some old corner….
But not so anymore. They become symbols now of a part of life gone by….a tangible memory of sorts. They would be more precious for her daughter than they are for me. In time I will probably give them to her. But as of now, I don’t want to part with them.....a selfish act on my part. But I have managed to justify it to myself. The pictures I keep hidden in my drawer…..and I cling to a memory which isn’t even mine….
Nothing else of hers remains with me. Without these pictures I fear how I would remember her.
I realize even as I write this that I still struggle to find ways to mourn her and to miss her…..to remember …..I debate whether I should write this or not….I have nothing more to say or add to this obituary of sorts. I have to end it here for now it seems to be lingering….and I do it, I stop. But an obituary calls for words of loving remembrances, of beauty and grace for she who is dead, of expressions of loss….and I have none to give.

G