In early June this year, my uncle passed away all of a sudden. Mom’s youngest sibling. He was hardly 50. We continue to reel under this loss and struggle to process it. In these last few months, 2 people in my friends circle passed away. Death, I told one of my best friends, was pulling the rug out from under our feet and changing life as we knew it. I’ve been wondering if writing about this would help.
As I hovered over the Drafts page this morning, I found something I’d written in May 2021, during the peak of the second wave of Covid-19. I’d published it back then, read it shortly after, and felt that gut-wrenching pain all over again. I’d quickly unpublished it (why did I need to pass on this despondency to others?) and moved on.
14 months later, I realise I want these words here. Just for me to remember that - today, I seem to have coped with the deep sense of loss that I felt would never go away. Time does help. We do learn to move on…
23 May 2021
On Monday morning last week, one of my WhatsApp groups suddenly came alive. I got to know that the pandemic had snatched away a classmate from B.Com, R. Someone who’d spent 3 years in the same class as I had. Someone my age. The group had one of her last pictures. She had an oxygen mask on. The classmate, who shared this news with us, had stayed friends with R all these years. She shared another picture of R now, of happier days from the past, with the caption, “Where are you, girl? Why this hurry?” She was totally distraught. So was I. From the comments on the group, it felt like every other person on the group felt the same way.
I’d never spoken to R after graduating in 2010. It’s been 11 years now. For that matter, I don’t think we’d had any long conversation even during our B.Com days. Yet this loss hurt badly. R’s face kept flashing in front of my eyes. Snatches of long-forgotten memories came back. Her name came right before mine in the student list. Invariably, we ended up having a quick chat before our exams (the only time we didn’t sit with our own ‘gangs’). I remembered her unhurried walk and her pleasant smile. I remembered our trip to Bangalore. Her gang sat right next to mine on the train. I took out my hard drive to look for these pics. There she was. With that same pleasant smile. There was a pic of her drawing a pretty Mehndi design on her friend’s palm. I wonder now how she had managed to do that in a moving train.
Someone my age. That’s all that kept coming back. I walked around in a haze. The only thing tying me to the present was my work. But I wondered if I was up for it, if I was snappy. Just a few weeks back, I’d lost a colleague to Covid. I’d spoken to him just a little before that. Suddenly, just like that, he wasn’t there anymore. And now, there was another loss to contend with. I tried to pull myself together.
What was helpful was the nature of my work right then. As part of my work on Diversity & Inclusion, I’ve been doing a series of conversations. These calls are tough to schedule since it means finding 45 mins on people’s calendars for stuff that isn’t really contributing directly to their daily work. But I find that people are glad to take the trouble to do this. They are happy to share their stories. I’m a rank stranger. Yet they trust me with their experiences and opinions. I looked at my calendar on Monday and saw that a number of these calls were scheduled in the next 4 days. There was no way I was missing these. I knew these conversations would pull me out of that blank space I’d gone into. And that’s just what happened. I slowly found myself being able to deal with what the week had thrown my way.
Another event helped. An online talk I’d agreed to give at my alma mater. It had been R’s alma mater too, I thought, as I prepared my deck. I stopped myself. I couldn’t really carry my sadness into the talk. It was Friday morning before I knew it. I had a lovely time speaking to a bunch of 150 kids about 21st century skills. Skills that came in handy during my 8-year professional journey and continue to be important. I thought it went well. Feedback from the audience said the same. It felt good. The week was probably turning out better than I thought.
Just then, I heard that a close friend had lost her father. Yet another loss. I sat still with the phone in my hand, wondering how to speak to her . On my last lengthy conversation with her, she’d heard me out about some horrid times I’d gone through. She’d listened to me patiently and told me about how things were going to get better. How she knew I was going to see a lot of happy days soon. How she trusted my strength. I’d been grateful for her kindness that day. Now I didn’t know what to say. She and I didn’t do quick courtesy calls. We had to speak for long, and say it all. She didn’t pick up my call. I dropped her a bunch of texts and she sent back a short reply. I knew that’s all she’d be able to say then.
I haven’t been to quite understand this. The scale of loss. The suddenness of it. The transience of our lives.
I fervently hope time helps us all heal, because those of us here right now need to move on. I’ve been sending out prayers for everyone dealing with loss. I’ve been trying to take it one day at a time (something my manager and I speak about every day). Most of all, I’ve been trying to choose hope. And that hasn’t been very easy.
I look at my deck again, the one speaking about skills for the 21st century. Maybe choosing hope while coping with loss is the biggest lesson we’ve to learn right now?
Comments