#Sunday_Topic

                   I have seen my fair share of deaths in my family. 

         2006 my father in law . Not much impact on my psyche . 2007 . My husband and mother in quick succession. It changed my life for ever. 

 

         I was not left with much time to mourn them. With my father in law’s passing away my step mother in law and with my mother’s passing my father came to live with me. 

         My job took me from home early and I returned late. That meant I had to get up before dawn . Prepare for my son and the elders. Keep breakfast and lunch on the table , snacks in boxes and leave by 7.45.

         Evening tea had to be prepared. So every evening I would phone my step mother in law  to remind her. Progressive dementia. It would be hilarious if it wasn’t so pathetic. Two extremely opposite characters trying to live with a modicum of geniality. Both of them sure that they had the more claim on me. 

           Anyway  I gave in my papers when my daughter came for delivery.

             Stepmother in law passed away in 2011. A relief actually as I had to protect her from my father’s taunts . He could not understand nor had he patience with her dementia and related memory loss. 

              Last year my elder brother and father both passed away. My elder brother was the apple of my father’s eye. He was only 65. Under treatment for more than 25 years . Yet his passing away gave a jolt to all of us. He was exactly 15 months older than me. I was extremely proud of him. I think of our growing up years and can remember him having major impact on us younger ones. 

               No again I was not allowed to mourn him . He was a son ,a husband and a father they said. Now every time I think of him I go into tears , which I hide as I cannot grieve more than the  wife. 

                 My father in his 96 th year probably lost his will to live. A great loss for me as he made my family a cohesive whole. I lost a mentor. I lost a well wisher.

                  The same can be said of my son too . He had lost an uncle he was close to and a grandfather who was the sum of our family. I feared he would go into depression so when his friends were thinking of a tour to Kerala I pushed him to go along. 

             I knew I was resilient. Yet I had to keep myself extremely busy, sorting appa’s things, giving away to charities, closing accounts , lic , rearranging the house etc so as not to fall into despondency. 

              More than these 5 deaths what has impacted me most was the death of my grand mother in law in 1992. The authority figure in my marital home. I was under her thumb for 16 years. To this day I get nightmares where she takes me to task for not being responsible enough. 

 

               Even 2 days back she was asking me why the rava had worms . 😁. I keep rava in the freezer so there is absolutely no possibility of this. Only then I realised that subconsciously I was thinking about the Sunflower and Pumpkin seeds that were lying in the cupboard for the past 3 months.😁