That is what has been on replay on my music player...the song is by a Pakistani band called Strings
I come back to this song over and over because...I keep replaying the events of my grandmother's death.
I am no longer in denial.
I have bore the hurt and the pain, together with my dad whom I really doubted could accept his mother's death.
He being the youngest in his family and the spoiled son through his childhood, but he who turned out to be the one who took care of his mother in her old age; through her Alzheimers', through her not knowing who he was, who she was, and what had become of her and us, her legacy.
How she had changed from the women who singlehandedly and successfully raised five kids while her husband slaved away in the farms under the burning summer sun, to the woman who had to be told to chew her food, to swallow and let it go down her throat. I remember all this and much more. Mine and my family's life was colored around her.
She was the center of our existence, she lived for us but I could easily and truthfully say that we lived seeing her.
She passed away while she was in the midst of inexplicable pain. The circumstances are not something I want to graphically describe for anyone...just...it was as if the Earth was taken from under our feet while heaven awaited her.
People around us, they knew it was coming and sooner rather than later- yet for us, we lived day by day.
Seeing her, nothing else mattered much.
If she ate, we smiled. When she walked, we were content.
She breathed life into us, and when she left, we cried.
We had lost the thread that bonded all of us, the life had been sucked out, the colors were rotten and things meant nothing, and we- we let out sobs that shook us and those around us.
Hospital staff was sympathetic but for them it was an everyday occurrence in the CCU, but our lives- they had forever been changed.
Her maroon chair remains...empty, while the body waits under the green grass that thrives on the soil that covers her and the rest of the healing Earth.
I am sorry. I just want to say that you and your family have not lost that thread, only her body. Honoring her life with your memory keeps that thread alive. Being her offspring, if you carry her torch, she is honored.
I am even more sorry for your father. My father buried his mother this year, and though our families are very different, I can appreciate how difficult it must be.
"Consistency is not a human trait" - Maude, from Harold and Maude
we don't celebrate it but since quite a few of her grandkids were there and my dad and his sister were there....he said a prayer for all of us and for her and my grandfather whom I never got to meet since he passed away before my dad even got married (all this he said in tears while barely holding himself together since all of us kids were there)
thanks...but the thread has been weakened, we have to strengthen it by our constant effort to hold our loved ones close
"The heart's memory eliminates the bad and magnifies the good."
- Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Love in the Time of Cholera
http://www.progressiveu.org/012450-old-and-gold-times-change-my-immigran...
Main Chali Jayon Gi, Tussi Royi Mat --- I am Going, Do Not Cry...
the most clarity that she had in recent years was the last days before her death...
and she was saying it to us, begging us to take her out of the hospital and let her be in peace and we were helpless.
"The heart's memory eliminates the bad and magnifies the good."
- Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Love in the Time of Cholera
http://www.progressiveu.org/012450-old-and-gold-times-change-my-immigran...
The loss for words compels me to comment.
"Consistency is not a human trait" - Maude, from Harold and Maude
and even more now that she is gone, I just know that she knew we would cry and especially my dad.
The name that was on her lips until the very end was my dad's and his sister's because out of my grandma's four kids who are alive, she went through everything with my dad who is the youngest and my aunt, who is the oldest.
"The heart's memory eliminates the bad and magnifies the good."
- Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Love in the Time of Cholera
http://www.progressiveu.org/012450-old-and-gold-times-change-my-immigran...
Even though she's gone, she's watching over you and your family.She's alive amongst you because of the memories you share with her.
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It always seems impossible until it is done-Nelson Mandela.
But I can definitely feel that she will live through us and amongst us because we are her and she the one who made us, or something to that extent
:)
"The heart's memory eliminates the bad and magnifies the good."
- Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Love in the Time of Cholera
"close your eyes, clear your heart..." http://www.progressiveu.org/012450-old-and-gold-times-change-my-immigran...
to her dad...with the warning for him and her, to not cry because...
She will be with them in memory and in heaven (Insha"Allah)
"A person doesn't die when he should but when he can."
- Gabriel Garcia Marquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude
"close your eyes, clear your heart..." Allama Iqbal...An Ode to the Cup Bearer<