Mourning and Drama
“Onatinde edayil puttu kachawadam” — Malayalam hearsay — which translates to during Onam days you are selling puttu, which is an everyday snack. So that was the recent experience with the defined mourning period that we had for our dad. For us the mourning never ends for sure, for us that loss is never fathomable, and so why define a period.During this defined period we were baffled by some customs that actually didn’t make sense to me, but did it all for the sake of keeping with the norms or rather didnt have the strength to fight.
Can’t it be left to the family to figure out? Of course, support is very much needed. I really appreciate the close family coming in every day and helping us wade through the times, not exactly fully soaked in it, but in measures that can be handled by us.
The reality is that people folk in just to show they are here and they really don’t know how to converse with the loved ones of the deceased. Their conversations are more triggering than consoling. What is the plan ahead? was the frequent question, My response to them was sometimes a polite, “let us decide in some time”, other times “why are you so concerned, are you intending to call us to your fold?” and Didnt know or bother how to respond most of the time. Why was that important to them at that point when the family was still figuring out how to understand the loss even. They came to our house for them, not us.
Another set came to assess how are we mourning, and comment on it while snacking on the goodies that we were supposed to serve them. Gladly we had help around to serve the public who came to snack. We were supposed to sit in a corner and mourn, maybe it had some logic to it, but not something that we wanted to execute for ourselves, so were asked " Aren’t you supposed to sit all the time and not get out of the house”. Which also led to an altercation which wasnt needed. So the loved ones of the deceased are supposed to mourn as per a rule book which someone defined.
The best was when pilfering started happening at home, did they even think that things could just vanish from home in this situation and we just became ascetics not needing any materials from now on. Now you are on the lookout to lock things up in addition to protecting our hearts as the priority?
The funeral became a clandestine meeting ground for random people, more importantly we are dragged into alleging that we set that up. Oh yes, we planned this all for those to get together, because we were missing drama so much to lose a loved one for it.
It was actually fun to observe how we all behave in such situations. Some in remorse, empathy and some in not so needed forced emotions. We are still thankful for some of our people who paused their lives to help us ease into our new setting. Eternally thankful to them.
