Please, live in my memories forever
My heart is heavy and filled with sadness. Leaving my country of birth has never been harder. This time, it has been after saying final goodbyes to my mother and sending her off to rejoin my father who left her and this earth ten long years ago.
My mother was the baby of the house, even though she had two younger siblings. Her maternal grandmother and parents called her Babamma. In a dated family picture with her parents and siblings, she appears fuzzy. She must have moved at the last minute sitting still for a family portrait back in the days where each picture taking session took an hour or longer. My grandparents sat in chairs, my grandmother was holding her youngest in her lap, older children stood behind their parents, and younger ones sat by their feet on the ground. My mother looks ethereal and enigmatic in that picture. She was a self proclaimed trouble maker as a child. She talked about standing under the rain gutters during heavy rainfall as she loved the feeling of water tumbling down on her and soaking her. She didn’t get in any trouble. Her maternal grandmother would fuss over her getting wet and hand her towel to dry herself. While her older sisters kept themselves busy with inside activities, my mother was out in the streets playing cricket with her younger brother and his friends. When she told me all these adventures, I had to ask, “So why don’t you let us do these things?” She would simply smile. She grew into a protective bear of a mother after her trouble maker childhood.
On one of her visits, I took her into the mountains. She climbed every single rock on our hike and laid down on fresh white snow dressed in her bright pink silk saree looking like a rose. It was a beautiful sight to be beholden and was caught on camera. She was a small package of 4 foot 8 inches full of energy. She was easy to please, easy to anger, and easy to tear up when love, gratitude or sadness welled up from inside her. She was an emotional being who wore her heart on her sleeve and experienced a wide range of emotions to the fullest. She told me she got that trait from her father. She couldn't always find words to communicate these emotions. She showed her love through caring for others, cooking for them, and serving them. If anybody even thought about being thirsty, she would be there handing them water in a glass.
She said, “I wanted to go to college and find a job, but my father couldn’t afford to send me to college. We had so much money when I was little and by the time I graduated from high school, our family fell into hard times". She followed that with, “It is important to have financial independence. I am making sure you get the education necessary to be financially independent”. It was her mantra when I was growing up. She would say, "Anybody can boil water and make tea. Being good at math, that is the skill I want you to focus on.” When I was in 9th and 10th grades, she would come sit next to me when I did my math homework in the evenings. She would write down a couple of math problems to solve while I was at school after her chores were done and she had lunch. When I got home from school, she would excitedly show her solved problems to me and ask, “Check my work. Did I get it right?”
My fiercely independent mother allowed just one person, my father, to take care of her and was comfortable being totally dependent financially and emotionally on him. He knew and loved her adventurous spirit. He once encouraged her to light up a cigarette when they both sat on a beach surrounded by her sisters and their families. She posed for him with a lit cigarette in her mouth as me and my cousins looked astonished and giggled. In another picture she was dressed like a Banjara woman wearing a mirror work skirt, blouse, and a scarf wrapped around her. She posed for my father while we were away at school and kept that a secret for a while and when it was discovered she blushed. She told me not too long ago, “You father had me ride on an elephant and water scooter on one of our trips. For some reason he didn’t want to do it himself. He encouraged me to experience new things.”
She was devastated having to say goodbye to her partner of 51 years. Since she married him at the age of 19 years, she was fiercely loyal to him, and so was he. She felt lonely without him even when she was surrounded by family and friends. He left a void in her heart and life she didn't want to fill. She gazed up at his picture day after day for ten long years as he looked back at her with his gentle, smiling eyes and a slight smile. He was her everything. Without him, she was lost.
When she turned 76, she said with a sad smile, “I am now the same age as your father when he passed away. How much longer do I have to live without him?” I simply gave her a hug. After that every single year on her birthday she would say, “I have lived these many years more than your father.” On her last birthday just a month before passing away she said, “I have lived 5 years more than your father and I don’t know when God will take me.”
A broken hip robbed her of her mobility six years ago, clipping her wings. Relief came unexpectedly after a final fall confined her to bed for the last ten days of her life. She left peacefully in her sleep with her loving brother-in-law by her side. I wish I could have been beside her holding her hand, as she took her last breath, but it wasn't meant to be.
I longingly ask my mother again and again, “Please live in my memories forever”. Missing her for the rest of my life is a small price to pay for loving her and being loved by her.