Daily Times

My darling “mum” look at my face. What trauma has done to me!

It is correct, anger is easier to handle than grief, and as a result, I had to pause several times to reboot my heart to complete this compelling piece. Nevertheless, I have embraced the fact that the experience of losing someone, and tragic events are not only important to us but are very personal and their pain does not disappear if it is not validated.

My darling “mum” perhaps, I will never be as happy as I was in the old days of my childhood, precisely there were no ghosts, no fears! I have never felt like I belonged anywhere, I tried the countries, the books, and the drugs but when I enter the pain and hear the screams of bereaving families who are suffering alone in the loneliness, it looks like the only place in the world where I ever belonged.

Anyway, I never quite understand the notion of Christmas, which never fails to neatly plot a surprise. On 23rd December, entire Britain was preparing to welcome Christmas, in fact, the biggest party of the season. Several families were returning to their homes to reunite for Christmas celebrations and also to open their presents which are laid under the Christmas trees. And I was planning to leave my house at the request of my guardian to discuss his funeral planning. It was a novelty to witness this surprise, but why he chose this time of the year wasn’t less than a wonder to watch. You are right he is a man “ahead of the curve.”

Grievers, who have been left behind, can dwell in random markers and belongings to find tranquillity.

Understandably, I have planned awareness campaigns, family holidays, and recently my sister’s wedding, but have no experience of planning funerals. The severity of the subject is a nightmare, particularly, when you intend to discuss the funeral arrangements of a living person. Of course, it is emotionally challenging when you are already lost in the dense forest of intense pain.

I was naturally put on mute after I left my village and confined in my darkness which promoted the ghosts that still haunt me, and they come in many forms. I know this is not unique to me, but I have lost my brother-in-law, my grandfather, my friend, my cousin recently and there is something very odd about losing all loved ones. Pain, however, refuses to be buried.

A few months after the death of my brother-in-law, I found his wallet and an empty bottle he used for the last time to drink water, the precious artefacts we have to live with. We have kept his clothes, coffee machine and school bag, for all these years. I sometimes stroke my trembling fingers on the laces of his shoes, which he was wearing when his body was recovered, to try to feel anything that could remind me of him.

The grievers who have been left behind can dwell in these random markers and belongings to find tranquillity. However, it doesn’t work every time in my case. S was just 18 years when he died, and his loss impelled my decision to forge a life, family and career not far from the village where he was buried. Our departed loved ones and their footprints can be traced everywhere, and they often linger in the most unexpected, unknown places.

My darling “mum”, I still treasure the most important legacy of S: “helping people through people.” I continue to visit his memorial bed for days, weeks, months, and years – and the grief is cannibalizing without an expiration date. I realized that I have lost my courage when I lifted S’s casket to offer my shoulder for the last time and a stranger told me randomly “You are the only remaining strength to the family.” Accurately estimating, the song of loss and trauma is ended but the melody lingers on in my life.

During a prolonged lockdown, I discovered my cousin is diagnosed with stage-4 liver cancer. The blood tests, invasive procedures and frequent hospitalizations made his body considerably fragile and our hopes thinner. We lost him eight weeks after his diagnosis. His four-year daughter is grief-filled and traumatic, and his father’s death has altered her both biologically and psychologically. In losing him, she has lost the greatest blessing and comfort, perhaps a guiding hand is lost forever. His lonely wife, unable to bear the intense loneliness, became depressed, the tragic loss has brought on many weeks of mental ill-health, sleepless nights and sometimes so severe it included hospitalisations, and emotional numbness. Last time, she raced to the hospital to see her husband but as she reached the front door her husband took his last breath!!

A week later after the death of my cousin, my friend revealed he is a candidate for lung transplant which echoes the words of my late brother-in-law, “our bodies are battlefields and temples of burials.” Though I mourned his diagnosis, I wouldn’t have had the courage to probe for a deeper explanation. As a friend, I am worried about how long he would live without new lungs. A is very young, it gives me heartache that he can lose his breaths after a short walk, but he fights this battle more than once every day. He is working full-time and came here for a better life but was soon being rushed a hundred yards away from his dreams.

Perhaps, it’s clear that all failings in loss and trauma have no tipping point. The haunting ghosts have changed the landscape of my life, but more than decades later, my mother’s advice still rings. I asked her once who I might talk to when she is gone. She said, “To heart, as a grieving heart has the deepest cuts and it holds answers the brain refuses to see.”

The writer is based in UK, and has specialization in health informatics from Johns Hopkins University.