Mount Vernon’s joy: a daughter’s witness

DAD’S MEMORIES

- ARVASHNI SEERIPAT

THE sadness was etched in the air. Softly caressing and touching all around us. It felt like my Mom’s softest chiffon sari. Wrapping Dad in its caress, cloaking him, creating its own cocoon of solitude.

Anand Uncle’s death really hit Dad hard. There was no outward expression of pain. No loud scream to eject the sadness from the body, rather the sadness took hold like a morning fog. Gentle, rolling and without fear, without terror or anger. And it set in. Hard. Like a fist around Dad’s heart, rhythmically pumping to jog memories.

I could not understand it. We (as a family) were not close to Anand and his family. We saw them at weddings and gatherings but not that we visited homes frequently. I knew he had children, but I couldn’t tell you their names, how many and frankly where they lived. Somehow, someone with no influence on our lives had a thunderbolt of an influence on my Dad, in his death. It was hard to figure out. And because it didn’t make sense, we were tolerant of the sadness at first and became more dismissive as the days passed.

It was time to move on, to get over it. But it didn’t move on. The fog set in, like a fist around Dad’s heart, like a grip around Dad's mind. The grip lasted for a few weeks rolling into months. Life continued; birthdays, celebrations, and the joyous boredom of everyday life. All the time, the fog lingered, taking space in the back of our collective lives, holding court as we played in the atrium of life. It took months before we realised the sadness had passed and some semblance of Dad’s rhythm was back.