Loss and other miseries.

This last trimester will go down as the worst of my life of 20 years. Even as it's hard to believe that i haven't written about it anywhere, it's appalling that so much has happened. Recounting it takes me back to the little personal hell that has been my home for an uncomfortably long time now. I am not complaining though, i deserve it; i asked for it.

I lost my dadi very unexpectedly in the last week of January. This was the first time i experienced "real", irrevocable loss. I remember being okay and in control during most rituals. There was grief but it was tempered with rationality and sanity. Ironically, i have been worse when it isn't half as much pain- or at least it shouldn't be. A fight with my boyfriend has given me more pain, elicited more tears and howls from me than my grandmother passing away just like that.

That, obviously, speaks volumes about the kind of person i am and my priorities in life. I give precedence to a man i love over the person who brought me up when my parents went to work. I worry and care more about having this man in my life -- who i can't seem to stop fighting with -- than the only one person who loved me unconditionally, in spite of me, all my life. Thinking of her, i'm amazed at her patience, her resilience. Her love for every one. Her faith in the God she went back to, and the husband she devoted her life to. It is sick how when i came to Delhi, she was the first one forgotten.

I must be a horrible horrible person for having done that, for having not given her the importance and attention she commanded. I loved and respected her with all my heart but hardly ever expressed my emotions. I cried with her in her pain, when she lost her eyesight temporarily, but i also didn't meet her for days at a stretch even after going home. I wish i could take it all back. I wish i could tell her that i loved her, and that i'm sorry.

It's no surprise that i couldn't see her when everyone else in the family and even people who couldn't care less got to see her one last time. I couldn't see her because i didn't deserve it. I have done horrible things, things that i'm sure would have disappointed her alive, and did in death. All my misery is but a logical and justified punishment.

I just wish i could have a day with her. To just talk to her and sleep with my head in her lap while she moved her hand rhythmically through my hair. I miss her and it's weird that it didn't sink in until now. I have, for the first time in three years, stayed away from home for two months without wanting to go back except once. I don't want to go back to a home without her.

My nani would, of course, say that i'm over reacting. That we mustn't cry irrationally for people who we gave hell in life by not speaking up for them. All of us did give her hell in her last years. For most people, she died a gracious, painless, quick death and lived a fulfilled, happy, prosperous, ideal life but i know better. My family knows exactly what we put her through, even as none of us wanted to pain her, we put her through immense misery. I know that howmuchever i look to shirk away from responsibility, i had a small role to play in it too. I added to her agony by not trying enough to decrease it.

I miss her, and i feel wretched. I'll miss her on my birthday... My first birthday away from her. The first one without the 100 bucks she invariably gave me-my first gift on most birthdays. This year, i don't want to do anything for my birthday. I only pray and hope my life will sort itself out.
I'll have my last exam a day before, and would be fresh out of college, awaiting a degree, but a part of me will still be that little girl who made her proud once, and then lost her way somewhere along the line.