An agonizing pilgrimage towards life through the peace of death
On April 17, 2020, as I went to the cemetery to lay my mother to her final resting place, I couldn’t cope seeing the coffin being shut on her peaceful face, a face that always smiled at me, encouraged me and loved me unconditionally. How I wished the roles could be reversed? I was shattered, ready to trade anything to get her back, for she was my oxygen, her importance was felt only by her absence. Till this moment, I was always carefree, unaware that I was on life support, once she was separated from me, I was choking, but unfortunately not dying.
Life, the good teacher, lays down lessons to learn, a few learn and most suffer.
The peak of COVID-19 coincided with the death of my mother. Having nowhere to go, no one to meet, slowly metamorphosized my restful home into a pitiful dungeon. No one could make me cheerful, no one could make me understand, for I was suffering, primarily not by separation, but by guilt.
For almost 3 decades of my life, I tried my best to get the best, sometimes by hook and most times by crook. All I wanted was to satiate my appetite for various material needs at the expense of my parents, siblings, friends and colleagues, especially my mother. Even after getting my way on most occasions, I was unhappy, always murmuring and complaining.
For someone who had stretched herself continually for me and given her very best, sadly, there was hardly anything that I did for my mother. The thought that I could now, only have remorse put me in a continual loop of powerlessness. Wakeup-cry-sleep had become a routine and a way out was difficult.
Friends and family reached out and tried to bring me out of the vicious cycle of self-pity, but all efforts failed, until one day, out of the blue, one of my friends called me, not to give advice, but rather take it. Reluctantly, I decided to help him, only because he had helped me many times in the past and I did not want to be buried deeper in the filth of guilt. I felt hypocritical to help someone save their own house when mine was burning down, but, I knew it was the right thing to help a friend who seeks your help.
Helping my friend tackle his woes provided me with moments of happiness, for after a long time I was creating and I was solving, I felt ecstatic at occasions. But I questioned these bouts of joy, for in my downward spiral, happiness was an alien feeling, never visiting my terrain. My mother had recently passed away and how could I dare to court happiness?
Yet, these bouts of happiness helped me get the energy to do my chores better and over a period of a few months I realised, my mannerisms and the way I did many things were almost my motherlike. It was because of her that I learned so many good things, I became aware that she lives still on, in me and in the many ways I do things. This was a revelation for me, a euphoric moment that I got her back, never to be separated.
Reconnecting with my mother, gave me a new perspective, an awakening. The old me had struggled and eventually died, died to be transformed into a new me, unrecognizable from the previous version. The old me focussed at satiation, the new me focussed at providing, the old was mostly unhappy, the new was almost in bliss. I had reached an important shrine on my pilgrimage towards life, through the peace of death.
As I look back, twice in the same lifetime did my mother give birth to me, one physically and the other emotionally and spiritually. Earlier, I was a gluttonous caterpillar, crass, and uncouth. Life, the good teacher tried its best to help me smoothen my ways, yet, only a chrysalis could transform me from the inside-out into someone who has taken flight as a new being. A being capable of learning, adapting and growing on a daily basis.
Everyone is on a pilgrimage towards understanding the essence of life, but, is the agony of a chrysalis necessary to learn life lessons, is for the individual to decide.
