Nanamma, in your loving memory ........

Can we really forget people close to us eventually after their death? I have always wondered. It took me losing my nanamma to even understand how the pain feels like. I still can’t believe I’m typing this. I have not ever consciously thought that there would be a day where nanamma would not be around. But it is what it is. The day I really miss her, she comes into my dream and I cry my heart out in front her. I’m making do with that since the time she passed away.

                Okay! I don’t want to make this a mourning article. I just want to keep smiling like she always did. She is one of the strongest women I’ve come across in my life. When I say strong I don’t say it in a light way. She was really strong both physically and emotionally. I’ve never seen her getting irked by circumstances around her. She rarely lost her cool. She had a wonderful sense of humour and used to laugh aloud uninhibitedly as opposed to the general norm that women shouldn’t laugh loud. Even I laugh like that. Maybe that quality of hers got rubbed off on me. Not only that she was a bindaas person, always energetic, intelligent, full of life and hope and most importantly very empathetic towards others.

                It is my privilege to share with you an incident from her life. Those days it was rare that girls were sent to school. But nanamma was very good at studies and everyone’s favourite. When her father wanted to drop her out of school her teacher came home to convince her family as to how brilliant she was and which was why she needed to continue her schooling. Unfortunately she couldn’t. Whenever she narrated this story to us her eyes beamed with pride.

                She understood the true essence of life. Even when we were so tense about exams or when we did not perform well, she used to tell us the importance of staying hopeful and calm. I couldn’t have survived my intermediate without her. She was my bedrock.

                Her touch was divine, her smile was soothing, her words were wise and her presence was magical. I miss her. I truly miss her. It’s been two years but there is not a single day that passes by without us thinking about her. As Stella says in Five Feet Apart, “To understand death, you have to look at birth. So, like, while we’re in the womb, we’re living that existence, not knowing that our next existence is just an inch away. So, maybe it’s the same with death. Maybe death is just the next life, but an inch away. Or maybe it’s just a big sleep. Lights out. Done and done.” Perhaps, that's the way to look t it.

 

In the loving memory of my beautiful and strong nanamma

Spurthy