Her Grief

She wondered about her feelings, whilst sitting in the prayer hall where a very soothing kirtan was going on. The raagis had given a classical twist to the shabad as they made a conscious effort to revive the raagas of Bhartiya Shastriya Sangeet ( Indian classical music). Being a fan of classical, Meera sat sipping the mental nectar through the verses of shabads, deep into her mind. She felt comforted, divine and very peaceful. 

The bliss that she was experiencing was not unusual to her. She had often enjoyed the kirtans but today was different from other days somehow. The depth in the vocal tone of the raagi was complimented by the santoor ( a stringed music instrument) being played. Suddenly a woman sitting near her coughed a bit. The cough wasn’t disturbing yet it distracted her mind. It sounded like her mother’s cough. Mother had passed on eight years ago yet the cough alarmed her, she felt her mum was coughing. It was the same cough, the same sound. 

A realization dawned upon Meera. Everyone has their own unique cough: a unique tone and style of coughing and so had her mother. Suddenly she felt she had missed hearing that cough for so many years. She was emotional. All of a sudden a hoard of memories flashed through her mind: the night she spent with her mother in that hospital room and she heard her cough at night. That was the last she had heard her cough as she gave her some water. 

She wondered if she was still grieving or was it just memories. It made her emotional, it brought back the sad feeling of having lost her. Grief never dies! Grief claims a large part of the mind. It may appear as memory but it teases the strings of emotions lying bundled up very carefully in the deepest core of the heart. 

She missed her mother. 

She missed her voice. 

And now, she knew that she missed her coughing as well! 

She went back home, looked at herself in the mirror trying to hold on those tears. She saw her own mother in her face but, it wasn’t her. 

She missed her mother. 

This was grief, holding on to her like an everlasting accessory of life. 

……… no words left …….. only thoughts….

Grief comes as an attachment to the memories.

Sikiladi