Mourning…..

Dear friends

I am new to this site but love the platform it provides to us all as parents. Technically we all post about our children but today happens to be a day when I am re-living my childhood (in my head at least). The rain and the breeze take me back to my April session break when we went visiting my grandmothers place in Benaras (Varanasi). The one thing missing is the railway station right outside our boundary wall. I loved the noises of the station…. people…. coolies….. kids….. vendors…. the engine, and of course the rustic smells of food and coal. 

I stop my thoughts and think….. Why am I feeling like this today? And the answer brings back tears to my eyes. Its the 25th of June. I lost my naani on this day 26 years ago, a few years ago my uncle and last year same day my elder mama breathed his last. 

I am mourning by thinking of all the happy times.

Mourning…. something we all do at various points in life and for different reasons. But its also the one thing we never look at in the face. There is no prescribed way to mourn. For that matter there is no one way to mourn. Anything that causes pain, its our tendency to keep our kids away from it. And in the bargain we almost never teach our kids to mourn. They are not a part of rituals around death. They are made to go to a relatives or neighbours house or sit in a separate room with doors shut. They are almost not “allowed” to mourn the loss of a loved one. But do they not feel the loss? Do they not feel the pain? Do they not feel the emptiness of that relationship? Do the not want to ask someone “why”? Don’t they want to know where has the loved one gone? 

I have no answers….. only questions…..

Today as a mother of 2, a 4 year old boy and a 2 month old girl I wonder as life progresses for us how will I handle it……

I just hope that in the process of “protecting” my children I don’t bring up kids who become adults that are disconnected from the basic emotions of life and worry about displaying them. 

Fingers crossed for the future.

A smile on the face for the memories from the past.