How to cope with the loss of a loved one
Ten days ago, my father Pushkar-nath Kher passed away as I was aboard a flight to Goa. I had met him in the morning, as was my wont since he took ill two months ago and came to Mumbai for treatment, taking residence with my brother.
He was very weak and could barely whisper. The last thing he said to me when I told him I was heading for Goa to attend the wedding of a friend’s son was: Live life!
I then went to the airport and as I was in mid-air, around 1315 hours, he breathed his last. It was a peaceful way to exit this frenetic world.
To each of us, our parents are the most wonderful people on this planet. My father too was special to me. To the world outside, he may have been just a lower division clerk in the government bureaucracy. But to me, he was one of two persons — the other person being his father, my grandfather — who taught me some of the most valuable lessons of life and how to cope with its setbacks.
My father was 83 when he was snatched away from us and I realised that you never factor in that day when you have no one to call ‘Dad’. Of course when you are young, you think parents live on forever. I used to always think of my father, who was very close to me, in cinematic flashback as he would be in Shimla and I, all over the globe. That used to bring back very fond memories of my physical presence with him, wherever I was.
Memories have no timetable of their own. But when he lay ill in Mumbai, and I was physically present with him every day when I was in the city, there was no need for flashbacks. I could see him slowly ebbing away each day…
How does one cope with the loss of a loved one? There are times when mourning, bey-ond a point, becomes oppressive and stifling. I have seen many times that even if the near and dear ones of the departed want to move on, they are held back by the grief of a constant stream of mour-ners. My task was easier as my father never wanted anyone to mourn for him. He believed in celebrating life, and he said so in his last words to me.
So I had an unusual prayer meeting for him. Instead of the usual sombre, and often meaningless, eulogies, I invited my friends to come in their everyday colourful clothes and join me with a rock band singing hymns. I felt that it was a more truthful way of celebrating the life of a person who did not believe in grieving. Many persons told me that they felt a spirit of upliftment, not one of bere-avement. Most importantly, I could see my mother smile for the first time in months. It was a catharsis; the end of grief and the beginning of life and living.
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