April 1st, 2024

Today marks the third year of rituals since my mother passed. I am a Hindu, and we have elaborate rituals once a year to remember those who’ve left us. The rituals last for a few hours and causes me to go down the memory lane, not that I don’t think of my mother otherwise. I have always felt that I should write a blog that includes all aspects of my life. This morning, while doing the rituals, I thought, why don’t I start with a note about my mother. She is the best hustler I’ve seen growing up. What else can best kick-start whatever comes out of this blog. I’ll reserve a separate post later to talk about the hustler in her.

My mother was 56 when she passed due to health issues, details of which I’m still not comfortable writing. I’ve gone through various phases of emotions the past 3 years and had the support of my wife, my friends and my family to be in the mindset I am today.

This article shares some realizations about grief I’ve had over the past 3 years.

Grief does not work in stages

The various stages of grief, could be 5 or 7 or how many ever depending on the article you read, aren’t experienced linearly. Anger and sadness were/are my primary feelings. There is no need for us to bucket what we are feeling into a certain stage and try to go from one stage to another.

It hits anytime, that’s okay

It is very difficult to control one’s thoughts. Many times, I have tried to shift my mind to something else without getting sucked into grief and failed. Over time, I have now learned to embrace those waves of grief. It is okay for it to happen. Let it happen and go through you. I now take it as opportunities to remember my mother, think about the good times, give a kiss to her picture, put a small smile back on my face and get on with life.

You never accept, you learn to live with it

Most stages of grief talk about the last state being “acceptance”. I have a problem with that word as I don’t think I can ever accept what happened to my mother. What happens is, over time, you understand your own pattern and learn to cope with it. The tears that flowed uncontrollably initially, three years later, sometimes stop right in my eyes. I’ve now learned to let it stay there, go through the same set of emotions that I previously did, but this time, I know how I’ll feel, I let the grief pass through me, remember the good times and get back to whatever I was doing before.

Try to cope without comparing

Anything can be a trigger for the feeling of grief. Your own thoughts or something that you see. Often times I used to find it difficult to look at other people being happy without immediately comparing it to what happened to my mother.

You’ll never get the answer for “Why me?” The answer that has helped me is, that is how life works. There is no way to justify the things that happen. It is bloody random. There are lots of people who would have gone over worse things than me and there are others who got to enjoy living with their close ones for a lot longer than I did, but there is no comparison here. This was my way of “accepting” what happened to me, accepting the randomness of life.

It changes you forever, learn from it

I used to tell my mother after every health issue bout, that, this too is an experience ma, we’ll learn to deal with it and in due course of time, you’ll be fine. And now I’m telling myself the same. Sad irony no? Losing one’s mother is something that all of us at some stage, have to go through. And we will never be okay with it, be it at any age, how can we. But that is life, that is how it works. As someone who used to be so afraid of change and as someone who always worked hard planning for the future forgetting the present, I’ve now embraced change and living in the moment like never before. Having experienced the transience of life, that’s the least I would expect out of myself.

Do them proud, but don’t be too hard on yourself

From starting her life out as a kindergarten teacher, my mother went on to become the Principal of a school, being loved by lots and lots of students in the course of her multi-decade teaching journey. My parents have worked so hard to elevate our standards of living. I started my career as an ML intern and I have worked my way up to head engineering at a startup. My current financial position gives me luxuries that my mother didn’t have when she was working. She used to finish her teaching at school, do home tuition for some students who came home, used to go to the kid’s houses who paid more for the teacher to visit them and then make question papers for educational institutions, talk about hustling! While I want to do my mother proud by my hustle, those luxuries that I get to enjoy, I try my best to see how I would have seen them if my mother had been with me here, instead of depriving myself of those feeling guilty. (not easy sometimes though)

Take care of yourself and the people around, cherish every moment with your loved ones.