I
often wonder what it would be like if Shekhar were still alive. It is usually
around milestones like his birthday this coming week. He would be 52. Where
would we be? What would we be doing? I let my imagination examine all kinds of
scenarios. The question that stumps me every time is – who would I be?
As
life unfolds and reveals its secrets, it becomes harder and harder to imagine
yourself in a different place, time, situation as a person different from who
you are at that moment. It is one of those strange distortions. Although time
and memory are elastic, together they can create a hall of mirrors where it is
difficult to know for sure what is real and what is an illusion. Everything is
a reflection of or in relation to who you are now.
Death
works a different type of magic. It traps the person forever at the age they
died. So try as I might to imagine Shekhar as he would be now, I always see him
as he was when he passed.
There
is another twist. Over the past six years, the boys and I have built tentative
scaffoldings around the voids and spaces he left behind. Gauze like covers hide
these misshapen gaps in our lives…fragile webs woven from memories because the
physical space has been overrun…the cupboards, the rooms, the bathroom
shelves…only traces of him remain in the things he left behind. As the
corporeal has faded, needing concrete triggers like a photograph, a smell, a
sound for remembrance…the presence remains. Ageless, shapeless…an abstraction. His
imprint endures, living and breathing in a genetic legacy.
Would
Shekhar fit in our lives as they are now? It would require a dimensional warp.
Too much has happened since. His presence is all we can accommodate. I cling to
the last vestiges of him. It is like clinging to a shadow. Shekhar made life
safe, comfortable and stable. Ours is now diametrically opposed. I crave the
balance. I don’t question this longing. It is part of who I am now. I would not
be this person, if he was still here. There has been growth, change,
transformation…organic, circumstantial and multifarious. Like a sapling that
grows under the shade of a large tree…then one day...
Before
the worst happened, I was certain I would not be able to live without him. But
life had other plans. It has taken some doing and is still a struggle but I
have not only survived, I have thrived. I will never know who I would have been
if Shekhar were still alive but I would really like to believe that he would be
both surprised by and proud of who I have become…
Vish
you were here…
***
To
live in the hearts we leave behind is not to die.
Thomas
Campbell
*
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,
the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.
From 'Love after love' by Derek
Walcott
