I saw The Namesake last night, and it brought some memories rushing back to me. I remember feeling the same things when I read the book. I also wrote something back then which I wouldnt dare let anyone read, lest they drag me kicking and screaming to the nearest shrink. But a few psychotic episodes and therapy sessions later, I no longer fear the couch. So here it is. If you find it too morbid, here's what I have to say. Nobody asked you to read this. (Did you get that one, Marie??)

MORBIDITY
Before my father passed away, I often tried to imagine what his death would be like. My mind was filled with dark images of unsurmountable vacuous pain. Pain that one fears because there is no tested way of handling it. Pain that seems indelible and ever-strengthening. But when it happened, when I lost him, my reaction was quite different.

Losing someone close to you is quite like an out-of-body experience. Death brings out the robot in us all. Our body and mind switch to cruise control and we find ourselves surprisingly unaffected by the morbidity that surrounds us. Your mind still works logically as you plan the events of the day ahead of you. You pay attention to trivial detail as you prepare yourself for what you thought would be the worst day of your life. You wonder which of your friends will come and meet you, which ones you'd rather not meet. You engage your mind in remembering exactly how many years and months have passed since you last saw your mother's second maternal cousin who is standing before you. You also wonder, "How long before she leaves?" It must be about lunchtime in school now. Do your friends know why you didnt show up at school? Do they miss you as they joke and laugh and go about their routine? Aren't you glad you weren't in school when he died? Imagine being excused from class in the middle of the day because your uncle has come to take you home. And he didnt come alone, he brought bad news. Why are people looking at me funny? Am I doing something rather uncharacteristic for the situation I am in? Is there a universally accepted 'right thing to do' in such a situation? I wonder what it is. May be I should start by not looking so nonchalant.

Then kicks in the remorse. You wonder why you have not yet collapsed in tears. You wonder why it matters so little to you that someone is dead. You curse yourself for not remembering the last words you said to him. Or the last ones he said to you. You try to dig deeper into your memory so you escape all the recent horrors and reach back to the age of innocence. When you were six and your whole life stretched out before you, as did your dad's. Back when he was a hero to you. He still is, but for different reasons. It drives you crazy that you can't remember what he looked like when he was healthier, happier and (I hate to say this), morphine-free. Try as you might, none of those memories can replace the recent ones of suffering, pain and delusion. Has his entire life been reduced to his last few years in my memory?

You still havent made the connection. His death implies that you will never see or talk to him again. You will talk 'of' him for decades to come, and thats something. But its never enough. What does it really mean that he no longer exists? You never thought you'd struggle so much in understanding the implications of losing him. You thought you were smarter than that. It's only when you see his unmade bed, his clothes neatly folded in his closet, his favourite chair at the dining table, his crutches (which lay unused for the last year of his life), his wife, mother, father and other daughter; that you begin to appreciate the void he left behind. And then it hits you. Thats what death is. Like an electron hole, it has no meaning by itself. Its just the absence of life.