With a heavy heart.....

I really don't know where to begin writing this...for this piece of writing, the end is the beginning .

Sometime on Tuesday night before the Mother's Day last year....Wednesday, May 5th in the Middle East,  my brother was desperately trying to reach me. I missed all those calls from him because both A and I'd left our phones downstairs in the kitchen that night. As soon as I went downstairs at 6am, Wednesday morning for us in USA, I saw the call log. And I knew....I knew, because my brother and I had a pact. He was not to call me on my cell phone unless.......

I tried to buy myself some time that morning...went about my morning rituals, got everyone's lunches packed, tried to worry about my 9am presentation....by 7:30am, my knees were shaking. My MIL, who'd arrived in USA just two days earlier, walked into the kitchen, and immediately went to wake up A. They made me call my brother, and just hearing the tear-laden, helpless "Didi..." from him said it all. I insisted on coming to work to give my presentation....but finally broke down in front of my mentor and requested to be excused.  The rest of the day, week even, is a blur.

My first born, Ananya-6 days old, with her naanima...my mom. Sept 2002

The first similar, desperate call from my brother in 2008 had ended on a relatively happy note for my family. We'd all come to terms with the constant presence of sickness since then. For the past year and a half, I'd read all I could find about hemodialysis, and renal failure, and the estimated life expectancy of patients with an vascular catheter, and pain management. I'd talked to all my colleagues and co-workers  involved in renal research, and somehow come to the conclusion that I did not have anything to worry about for a long time to come.  Even when I visited my brother in the summer of 2009, my heart refused to accept what my eyes saw - and by the time I came back to USA, I'd convinced myself that all was well. That my notion of a family was going to remain intact.

Funny how one's mind has a way of seeing what it wants you to see, rather than the obvious.

It took my brother almost 4 days to get our visas approved. And I found myself taking a flight  out of JFK to Abu Dhabi, on Mother's Day Sunday....to bid a final goodbye to my mom.  Instead of talking  to her and reading her the letter that Anya had written for her  naani to have on Mother's Day as planned, I was going to see her go away forever. I didn't know how much I was hurting, I didn't think I was hurting....in all my rational world, I'd known this day was coming. I'd thought I'd prepared myself well enough. I'd shut out all the noise, and I think that even as I stepped off that plane, I believed that all would be well when I woke up. But when I did wake up, my world's reality had changed...from my mom being sick, to her being gone; from me being someone's daughter, to  my being nobody's child.

My mom and baby P, June 2009. The last time I met her.

Have I missed her in the past year? I know she's never far from my thoughts. Every meal I cook, is like having a conversation with her because that's what her legacy to me is.  Except that now I can't go back and ask for her recipes. Every time I see Anya, I see my mom in her....amazing how alike they look despite being a generation apart. I regret that I will never be able to tell her that. Every time baby P makes up a word in her garbled English-Hindi, I hear my mom's delighted laughter - just the way she laughed when P called her MaNana instead of Naanima for the first time.  I'm so disappointed that I can't really hear her. Every time I look in the mirror, I see glimpses of her in the way I dress, or express myself. And I turn away.


No, I haven't missed her. Because she's never been far away enough to miss.

But I've missed her. Being able to share with her. And being a daughter.

Today is the Wednesday before Mother's Day; and tomorrow- May 5th 2011- she'll have been gone a whole year. And I write this with tears in my eyes and a heavy heart at having to let her go. But the truth is that she lives, in me and Anya, in what we are and as we appear to others. And her presence will be felt in all the meals that I will make for my family, for the rest of my life.

After a year, I'm making peace with the fact that she's gone.

She is, and will be my mom, irrespective of her physical presence.

Every Mother's Day of my life, she'll be cherished for who she was, and missed.

Some day, when my girls grow up and stumble upon this blog, they'll learn a few things about their naani. And they'll feel her and love her and miss her, just as much as I do.