There is an instant connection between us and then we just depart to our worlds of dreams to get along with life. The connection more miraculous than that of the much heard of devout practices of sorcerer. The thoughts pure and uninterrupted by the reams that life forms have spread over the earth as a blanket of compulsion. The enlightenment reached through the silent heartbeat, there is a connection though and that is sure. The beauty is mesmerizing and somehow frantic in search of appreciation. The joy of being in touch with the heartbeats that one can comprehend well beyond description and perception. The weather has lifted itself from the gates of the heat and the sun and now as if opened its arms in silent welcome to the rain gods. The pitter - patter of the rains has left an imprint of the mind on the footpath, which reflects the steps taken on the mud. And I sit at the steps built in the shed of the verandah of my home. My feet half in the shade and half as if scared to let then rain wet it. The tucks of my dress freely flowing around my ankles, and my hair let down in the welcome of the rains. The breeze bringing the westward disturbances has cast a relief on the city. The colors of the sky have changed to dull gray and the surroundings brightened by the freshness of the washed greens.
At the moment of glory a raindrop passes from the fibred shed as if fulfilling its desire to wet everything that it can, drops down from the edge and falls on my cheek, runs down and ends at my lips. I let it slip as if it"s a part of my own. For days now I have not eaten anything and seen no one. Not because there is a famine and nor because the rains have left me stranded in the home. But then somehow, the warmth of the home has restricted me from embracing the warmth of humanity. I complain when a fly tries to peek in to my nose and wave it away. How much longer I have to wait I don"t know but still I awake at times, and then I write. Pour my heart out on the tapping of the super system that I have that notes my waves of emotion and feelings. I haven"t cried since a long time and I know that if I let go of this emotional collection that I have carefully arranged in the menagerie of my insides all hell will break loose.
Is it a tragedy that I am facing, no one knows? My once close friends have given up on telling me to smile, and now I can see the fatigue in their eyes. A string of desires runs at times and I am charged to make a change and then when I sit and look within to contemplate I find nothing. Being alone is not what I fear, dying is not what I fear, what I fear though is the hordes of emotion that I carry and if it breaks God save me. The once meanings of the weather has been long gone and now all that remains is emptiness. Silently I rise and go in to my room, where I lock myself up for days and don"t come out. I am grieving, morose and mourning the death of my only sole companion in this huge world. And I can mourn not by wearing black but by adorning black in the heart and the soul. The Black of death, the Black of silence, the Black of the loneliness. The Black that so truly forms the essence of the dark secrets of life and death and thereafter.
I had decided that I would not cry and let go of the love that I have for the one lost. And so now I rage a battle within, the pain is not the loss itself. It arises from the gut of the heart, a tumult of emotions, a rising wave of that which could have been, the strange niceness of what had been. I am in search of that one day, that one moment, I have visited each of the places that we had shared and enjoyed as a memory and yet they come back to haunt me. Lovely it was, the sun soaking the togetherness and the moon calling out to the wind for us. The one object of affection and life that I shared for so long. The little ways, in which we ran about following the chirruping squirrels in the garden, still comes alive.
Someone once told me that the tears run down the love that we store and converts it to a distant memory and time then washes away the clarity of events that were. Certainly I don"t want to loose the feeling and make it memory forever and which can be washed away by time itself. Then I exercise control on the mind to focus on the things that are rather than that were. The mind focuses and also achieves most of the goals that are set and yet the heart gives up easily. The pangs of pain so strong that they almost make the heart burst out and still no torrent of tears arrive. As if the eyes have given up the feeling and the numbness has enveloped it.
The seasons have changed with time and the earth and the sun, but the one season that remains for eternity in the depths of my mind are buried as an archive. So inaccessible to the others and as if by protocol keeps popping updates from the past for me to read. The flowers that had been set by him on the tabletop are still there. Dried of the agony f being uprooted form the source and placed in else where. I know that I will never remove them from where they are. The bed, which he stepped out of, has not been made, I know it will never be made, I wont let it be made, and it is not for the pain that still is burning my insides but for the fact that it holds his presence.
The rose that he planted in the garden last week for our first anniversary has also withered as if in memory of his presence, no matter how much I try to save it, just doesn"t seem to be listening to me. It seems like it doesn"t need water and the sun but the love and the words that he kept talking to the rose about. And so today in the midst of the mist that I had gathered around me, I decided to fill his place and talked to the rose for an hour. Told her anecdotes of our companionship and the feelings that I had within me.
A week has passed and now I can see the thorny rose bush with new fresh little leaves bursting out of it. I thought that it might be the weather and then I realized that it was the talking that I had done. It is now that I understand what he used to do when he kept talking to his garden. I just smiled a faint smile for the first time in three weeks that he had gone. It felt good no doubt, as if I had become a part of his world. The one world that I had neglected until today.
I opened his wardrobe and saw the neatly filed heap of clothes and tidy set of things kept in a systematic way. That was characteristic of him, very meticulous and neat and tidy. And there on a hanger was out this yellow shirt that I had gifted him, last birthday, I took it off the hook and swung it on me. The familiar scent of his presence filled me with the warmth that his company had always encompassed me with. The moment the shoulder settled on me, my heart went out to my throat and in a flash I re lived all the years that we had spent together.
Laughter, silence, tears, fights, pain, rains, weather, life, joy and most of all the happiness that it brought to us. I slowly opened my eyes fearing the reality that I had to live in now and understood what he had left me with. He had left behind his breath in my hair, his arms around me to protect me, his emotions on my shoulder to share, his life in my heart, his dream in my eyes, his fears lost with me, his hopes within mine, his joy and happiness in my smile, his love all over me, his compassion holding my hands, his effect of positives on me ad still I decide to be morose.
I have not lost all yet and the dreams remain still, although alone I still have all that he has bestowed on me when he was. I open my eyes refusing to shrug him off me, letting the shirt dangle oversized on my shoulders. I walk through the house to the verandah and for the first time in three weeks outside our house, right in to the middle of the garden walking across the rose bush. I stand there in the midst of the pitter-patter that I cannot hear now. All I know is that there is silence, stunning and still. I am suddenly deaf to the rhythmic moves of the droplets on the fiber or the splashing of the water all around me. Engulfed in the grief of the rain and the sweeping emotions that make my legs shiver more from that which calls from within than from the rains outside.
I revive in a flash that what was and had been and the glorious past of color and charm and love. I revive in that one flash with the rain continuously permeating my heart and the mind that I had been his and he was mine while he was. I revive that the essence of his presence was more happy and the effect of his absence not haunting but joyful. I had the joy of his being with me all the time, even when he is gone.
Standing in the rain I can feel his breath over me, I can see his child like eyes light up with enthusiasm at the sight of the rain, I can enjoy his rhythmic tapping and singing of unknown melodies, I can see the smile that graced his lips all the time, I can see the naughty glint in him when he is up to mischief, I can look through his white lies, I can bear the pain of his disappointments, I can be the target of his anger, I can be the source of his inspiration, I can and I am his.
Pelting the earth and the tin shed that is laid on the roof of the garage I hear the distant voice of his soothing tone, the vision of the first time he had take my hand, the last time that he had taken my hand and the echo of his voice blaring in my ears. Calling out to me asking me only one thing, no matter where I am, I am watching so you better be happy or I will return as a ghost to haunt you. And then the burst of laughter tinkling around the porcelain hospital floors then whites pale and yet so enlightening. And that was the one moment that his life slipped off my arms and vanished along with the laughter of the moment. It was then that I froze for the first time in my life, froze of the fear and the moment, paralyzed and taken over by a string of emotions, tears that were always there never came out. As if my eyes had forgotten to blink, not willing to let go. They withdrew me from him and took him away, and I was left white from the depths of the heart to the face of the outer self, the color of nothingness, the color of silence, the color of sudden peace, white.
And now the rain had restored the feeling of warmth and the old days that had been enveloped me. I ran my hand over my head and saw that I was soaking wet, the rain tearing through my skin and getting to the depths of my soul and whole. The crushing sense of gone that made my heart feel heavier and the weight of the ache longing to explode. Then along with the drops of rain that filtered the skin on my face, a tear escaped my eyes. I thought it was fake, but then the warmth it left behind was evident. For the first time since he had gone, I had let a tear fall, and then I hit the ground. My knees landing flatly on the surface of the mud, the color of my placid white turning the shade of brown, the water still running on me from above.
I broke down and the sigh that left my throat made me cry. That day I wept, I wept, I let go the strings of emotion and played the game. The tears falling off the bridge of my nose and ending at my throat and a loud moan called through my voice. The pain engulfed in the radiance of the rain. The tears camouflaged by the droplets of rain. The desire to hug myself harder and the pinching growing each moment.
That day I was a widow, the story of my loss, my own. The pain in my heart forever, the desire to let go off and sink so high. And still I knew he didn"t want me to let go. I had to hang on to this life, because he wanted me to always. Live after him. Love after him.
That was one fateful day.