“Amma, I am leaving ….take care of yourself and my siblings...” He said and handed over part of his savings to me, the money which he earned while working in Bombai. I kissed him on his forehead and waved goodbye.I was sad, so he smiled and said,” don’t worry I’ll come back soon”. Your father drove him to the airport and he waited there till he got his boarding pass. I got his first letter from Saudi Arabia after ten days of his departure, saying he is all safe and sound and that he’ll look for a job soon.

After two months and 16 days, we were all waiting for his arrival. i was happy to see him and yes again I kissed him on his forehead the only difference was that this time… I kissed on that cold ,pale forehead of my dead son.”
22 years have passed and my grandmother still has sharp memories of that grey day, back in the year 1993 when she bid adieu to her son who is nomore. Little did she know that he was handing over everything he had ..the fruit of his hardwork, his possessions and left for his heavenly abode. A car accident took her son away.

Though I have  known him only through photographs and stories heard from my cousins, I have developed a sense of admiration and respect towards him whom I have never met. My father still doesn’t like the sight of seeing his brother’s portrait hanging on the wall with an LED bulb glowing in front of it. It infuriates him. He says that it disturbs him to see his brother in such an inactive state.

I was always scared of attending funerals. The sight of people mourning over there dear ones keeps on bringing me a fear, the fear of being bereaved (losing a relative or close one by death) and I wonder how on earth will I bear that unbearable pain. Each time my parents talk about them growing old, it makes me think, “what will I do, if my parents pass away??” I have no answers to that question and I prefer leaving it unanswered..

i was never so close to my maternal grandparents, I remember being reluctant to go to my moms place. Last year my grandfather passed away and I was with my mom at the time of his death at her house. i had to witness someones death and it was depressing to the core. I could not sleep for several days. Along with my grandfathers death, I had a broken friendship to increase my pain. The world kept going on, but nobody knew what I was going through.
That,”one last look at you, and I am not going to see you ever again” part is so damn depressing, as well as terrifying to the core, it took me time to get over that melancholy. When life seems a nightmare and things go out of hand, we have a habit of leaning on to the sides and to the people who offer us love. I have done it so many times and each time I did, I have ended up being hurt. I have realized that its because we do fail to understand that the love offered had limitations and the time period was transient.

Over the years ,though there have been brawls and ego problems, when something goes wrong people come together under one roof saying,” we are a family, and we will face it together”. Proving it again and again that family is the only place where u get love offered unconditionally. i have a picture of me hanging on a guava tree (when I was some 3 or 4 years old) and my cousin brother Vinsus (more than a real brother) holding his hands up in the air ,ready to catch me as soon as I fall. I remember closing my eyes and letting my hands off the tree and of him saying “got you”.
That’s how your family members are. Even if you are scared of falling, you can trust them blindly. They are always ready to hold you tight. Your family members they will tease you to death, but they will never laugh at our in capabilities. they’ll be angry with you, but they will never hold a record of your wrongs or of the pain you caused. And nomatter how bad you feel about yourself, they’ll keep on reminding you that you are special and that you mean a lot. They keep on filling those empty spaces inside your heart. I love my cousins; I love them all equally.
As years pass by, we learn to live without our dear ones who are nomore alive. The way one adjusts with it is different for different people. On one hand I have my father, who keeps his emotions submerged deep inside his heart. He never shows it out. Last summer he took me to his ancestral house in Kerala. As far as I was concerned, it looked like an antique piece with a roof which would come down anytime soon. But for him it was not just any house but the place where he grew up..”it was fun those days, belonging to a family of 6 brothers. We would never stop fooling around, especially me and him, we turned it into a mad house…..” My father said, and I understood the fact that he still misses his elder brother..
On the other hand I have my mother who talks about her pain and does little things in memory of her father. “I planted a jasmine plant, I took a branch from your grandpa’s garden, u know the one which he loved a lot. I kept on watering the plant and would think of him each time I did,..it never flowered and made me sad, until then on Maundy Thursday, I saw a tiny little bud hiding beneath the leaves, and my eyes were filled…”
She made me realize that some people never die, though they leave the earth, they’ll never leave our hearts.
After a long gap of some 11 years, I got a chance to spend. Easter this year with my grandmother (dad’s mom) and my godparents. Not much of celebrations, but it was a small and simple one.
My grandmother gave me some money. She took out something from her old, worn out purse and said..”do u see this?” ..and I saw four 50 rupee currency notes, they were not issued anytime soon..i could easily say, by looking at them.. Whats this?, I asked.. “Stephen, handed over this to me before he left for Saudi Arabia” she said.. My heart was heavy, I wanted to say so much, but words didn’t come out, all I could say was “amachi” (grandma)…. She smiled and looked away…,at that picture hanging on the wall. It was an unusual moment, an uncanny silence spread through the air and trust me it did speak a lot.

True what  E E Cummings in his poem once said,” I carry your heart with me, I carry it in my heart”.