Sunday, November 10, 2002		Life Ties

Coping with the loss of a loved one
Taru Bahl

AMY, the youngest in a row of five sisters, was not only quite pampered but was also the most vulnerable of the lot. When she fell in love with Rahul, her college classmate, the romance became the talk of the town. It was a fairy-tale wedding. Disaster struck immediately. While they were returning from their honeymoon, on the winding h ill roads of Shimla, their hired car turned turtle, killing Rahul on the spot.

A few weeks later, Amy realised she was pregnant. The family’s consensus was that she terminate the pregnancy and she did.

She moved to Delhi. Time Life was looking for sales volunteers to market their books. Not ready for a full time job, she found this appropriate, for it gave her an opportunity to interact with people, regain her confidence and work at her own pace. She did exceedingly well. She was the region’s best performer. Incentives were attractive and she was nominated to attend a conference overseas. This was a decisive moment. She finally came to terms with the tragedy, finding a meaning and direction in what she was doing. After spending seven years with the book company, Amy was handpicked to head the sales department of a multinational that was setting up operations in India. From here, her career graph soared and Amy turned into a full- fledged working woman.

There were eager suitors, some not very decent about their amorous advances. Family kept suggesting re-marriage, but Amy shied from making any emotional investments. When she was in her late 30s she met Karan, a Professor of Engineering, who was a perfect foil for her exuberance. Steady and understanding, with him around, Amy could relax and bask in the after-glow of being loved unconditionally. After a long time, she could let herself go and not worry about putting things together.

There was confidence that he was there and that he would take charge. They did not share the passion which marked her first love but there was a comforting permanence.

Sohail was born to them within the first year of marriage. Amy took a long sabbatical from work. Being with the little one was addictive so much so that the career woman in her all but disintegrated. Her leave kept getting extended till she took to full-time mothering. There were servants and Karan was a committed father which left Amy free to concentrate on a career she had worked hard to build. But she had lost interest. There was no urgency to pack him to a kindergarten. It was only when he started schooling at 6 did Amy go back to work, this time in a part time flexi-consultative capacity with an upcoming firm. This allowed her the freedom to structure her day, which essentially revolved around her family.

Time flew by. They were happy and content. Sohail was an achiever. Without being overtly competitive he was way ahead of his classmates. Consistently a topper, there was a huge gap between his and the next person’s performance. He wore his intelligence lightly and had an insatiable need to learn and hone skills. Mountaineering was a passion as was playing the violin, writing poetry, making pencil sketches or writing ad copy. He earned pocket money while penning jingles when he was barely in class X. His room was lined with trophies and certificates.

Amy had a sense of foreboding when he opted to go for a mountaineering expedition in the Himalayas. This was not the first time he was going and she had never tried to smother him with her maternal concern. This time it was difficult not to voice her apprehensions but she did not. She was uneasy, restless and, by the third day, scared. She finally decided that she would try reaching him and urge him to return. Never before had she felt like this, surely he would understand her illogical paranoia. Next morning, before she could try locating him, the newspapers reported how a mountaineering group had gone missing. Everything went haywire after that. It was Sohail’s team. Efforts were on to locate them but chances were bleak. For over a fortnight, extensive search operations were carried out. It was a seven-member group. Two of the boys had at some stage returned, unable to sustain the biting cold and rigours of high altitude mountaineering. Three bodies were recovered and Sohail and another boy were finally declared ‘missing’. While no one used the word ‘dead,’ there was a resigned finality in their mourning. They wanted Amy to see that he may never return. Only if she accepted that could she mourn for him and eventually come to terms with her grief.

Karan stood by Amy throughout. His silent presence was stolid and unwavering though inside he felt hollow and lost. Amy was inconsolable. Reduced to a skeleton, she could neither eat nor sleep. With eyes transfixed towards the door, she silently waited for him to return. She had converted his room into a mausoleum. His photographs chronicled his life and talked to her from the walls, tables, mantlepiece and study desk. She did not let the flame of the diya near his life-size picture extinguish. Her tears refused to dry. The family tried counselling and distracting her with other things, hoping she would somehow come to terms with the finality of losing Sohail and get back to work, if only to minimise the hurt. But she had closed herself from everyone.

She participated robotically in things but run away, even from those who loved her, because somewhere she felt that they did not understand what it meant to lose not just a son, but a friend, companion, soul mate and a part of her very own being. She felt amputated. How could they expect her to bounce back and resume normal life ? Things would never be normal again, she knew that. She turned to gurus and healers hoping to find the answer to the one question which hounded her, "Why?" No answer seemed appropriate, no reasoning was enough and no abstract philosophising calmed the fires raging in her belly. She turned silent. It was unbearable watching her. She neither grieved completely, for there was a hope that he would magically return. The loss seemed so overpowering. Karan finally mustered the courage to enlist the help of friends to set up an NGO to promote the talents of promising young men and women – be it sponsoring them for overseas education or helping them raise capital for an entrepreneurial venture or assist them in staging a music or dance show. Through the smiling hopeful faces of the youth he hoped to re-inject some sense of purpose and love back in Amy’s life.