When You Lose Your Mother and Your Daughter Leaves Home.
I’ve been in the grip of fear for the last few months. There’s a dark cloud looming over my head that I struggle to rise above. A restlessness that makes me stare at the ceiling at odd hours in the night and look into my cupboard not remembering what I am looking for. My world isn’t exactly crumbling but except suddenly, it just looks like a long and lonely road. That seems inevitable and scary as hell. What exactly am I going through? It doesn’t make sense except I lost my mother suddenly in March this year. I visited her in January and she housed and even cared for me after a minor operation. It was a poignant moment when my frail 87-year-old amma reached out to help me walk. We celebrated her 87th together and she hosted a great lunch for her oldest friends. She looked so happy. She was taken to the hospital with a severe headache. She told the doctors her symptoms then slipped into a coma thereafter. She passed away in the hospital after a horrifyingly long spell. Horrifying for us. Being adopted I didn’t even make it to the obituary. Relatives decided for me. Now if my parents had a say, it wouldn’t have been an option. This is what I mean. The moment both your parents die, shit hits the fan. Your relationship with your siblings (which boils down to random WhatsApp messages) just collapses like a deflated balloon. Immediately, arguments, differences and every pent up emotion you ever stored in those four chambers of your heart, instantly arise. You realize your living parents were the only reason you ever met up with your siblings in the first place. It’s usually an illness or death or a major birthday that’s the default reason. After that nothing. I don’t see us visiting each other or resolving family issues (really each to their own now) or sharing a tete-a-tete because we miss each other. Hell no. I do love and miss my siblings but something has changed the equation; it seems irreparable. They live on different planets and you don’t know what’s going on in their heads. And they sure as hell don’t know what’s going on in mine.
Growing old sucks. That’s the reality. My beautiful daughter turns 21 in a few hours. She recently graduated, found herself a job in the same month, moved into an apartment and set up home all by herself. Just like that, she’s an independent woman at the age of 20. I’m so proud and happy for her. But I’m not over the moon. In a blink, two very important people in my life are gone. One permanently. When my daughter reads this, she will pick up her phone and tell me how foolish I am to think like this. She speaks her mind, this one, but that’s what I miss. The conversations. I miss catering to her last-minute neyyappam and biryani cravings and hearing her hum a tune while baking in my kitchen. Just as much as I miss her brother who left home even earlier than her, at 18. We exchange recipes on the phone and he reviews my podcast recordings on request in spite of his busy schedule but God, how I miss meeting him more often. Nobody tells you one never gets used to that damn “empty nest.” You think you let your kids go but really you didn’t have a choice. Yes, I’m sad but is my sadness coupled with a sense of nobody needs me now? Am I being needy in feeling wanted? Frankly, who cares? All I know is I haven’t had the time to process all of this and life isn’t the same. My heart is just filled with sorrow for what was. What keeping busy will never replace. Being a daughter and a mother.
#heartofconservationpodcast #deathofaparent #daughters #mothers #siblings #emptynest
