How I Faced The Loss Of My Son

From the Archives of Yoga and Total Health

- B.A.Rao

Often we like to believe that all is well, we look condescendingly at others, deluding ourselves about how clever we are and compliment ourselves on our wisdom. And then, suddenly without any warning, it happens. The unexpected, the blow, which we can never imagine comes. Suddenly, a promising son who was doing well in college, whom we expected would be all what we had failed to become in our youth, who would make our life richer, suddenly gets ill and the doctor diagnosis it as cancer. He has four weeks to live. Our lives are shattered.

In all such cases, we find we are totally helpless. We discover to our dismay, we not only cannot acquire things, but we cannot hold on to them or people either, even if we desperately want to.

Now let us see what actually happens to us when such a blow falls: We tell ourselves we are finished because we have invested a large part of our ‘I’ in our son. We believed that he will outlive us and fulfill our unfulfilled ambitions and suddenly he is no more, thus killing a part of what we assume to be ‘us’.

We are consequently overpowered by despondency, frustration, and depression because we have put our trust in perishables, this shattering of our hopes makes us very bitter, confused and cynical. We are terribly disappointed to find such tragedies can come to us also even after our very sincere prayers. We, who prayed to God every day, start abusing him. Or we could land into