People mourned and people missed

It was an Eid bereft of many: Chacha, Syeda Aunty, Zainab Aunty, saamney wali Aunty.  May Allah forgive them their sins and help us all find our way to salvation.

We visited the aggrieved families in the neighbourhood and it struck me that mourning is a very solitary experience.  We miss seeing Zainab Aunty in her balcony in the morning but none of us mourned her absence in the way her daughters did this Eid.   Mourning comes from a deep sense of loss that can seldom be shared with empathizing visitors.

In contrast, Chacha left noone behind to mourn his absence, or perhaps not in our house.  We missed being begrudgingly called from Bhaijan’s at 4pm because he had arrived but none of us felt terribly sad over his not being around.  Syeda Aunty, too left no children but we almost felt a sense of duty to actively remember such a wonderful woman who had braved such a difficult life and died so very self-reliantly.  She was Ammi’s friend and not related to us at all and yet I felt a greater grief sitting by her bier than I did by Chacha’s.  Perhaps my grief over her loss is more of a grief for my mother who is left friendless, without a confidante at this age.  Perhaps my love for her is but an extention of my love for my mother.

I think of Umair and I wonder if I were to lose a parent, would I be quite as endlessly disoriented as he seems to be without his father?  It is strange how when K and I talk about Ammi and Daddy dying, we think of more of the logistic issues we would be confronted with rather than the unimaginable loss Umair seems to feel.  It makes me wonder if we have turned into hard, callous women.

And despite the sadness, there was a family reunion of unthikable proportions.  All of Bhaijan’s sons were together and as much as we love them as brothers, we were happier for them being together than for them beign with us.  Reunions come laden with so much nostalgia and so much wanting to relive old times that the present which has moved on, can be disconcerting.  It has taken much effort to put all that behind and enjoy what we have for its own sake because in spite of all that has broken away since their mother’s death, we love them dearly and at the end of the day, that’s really all that matters.  The other two of the four of us would have completed the family and they were missed, again more by Ammi than by us, who wanted to make the most of what was available at hand.

It’s paradoxical to miss what you know never existed and yet, even without the yearning, there is undeniable sorrow.  There, Ali Akbar Bhai, I admitted it.  I did and do miss him.  I may hate him and know him to be a loathsome, despicable asshole and may not want anything to do with him but I do miss him.