Death

Death is frightening. However people are dying all the time and some of them happen to be your loved one…
But in this particular case, she was'nt really a loved one,just a relative…who used to drop by on every Eid…sometimes on a shadi, sometimes for tea…..but when you drop by at someone's place for 20+ years…then there is a degree of attachment…you remember what they looked like 10 years ago…15 years ago…last week and then you realize….you will never see them again….and that gives you a sinking feeling….
Aunty Teera was not a very warm, in fact a very status conscience and materialistic person…
But then who is not…when we see a Gucci watch…we realize it is expensive…we know who has the bucks…wether we envy the owner or not….that's another story…
Had she had several kids, all of them well-settled and married with kids, it would have been a different thing…..her son is unmarried and daughter is divorced…and they were in Ireland…when she passed away…her son had got a job there, after years of financial constraint, she had some fortune, which she never got the time to spend….I didn't see the deceased person's face- because I want to remember them as they were alive- thriving, happy, sad, angry and responsive to what you say, not white and cold and dead…
It's life they tell you, and you hear it, but it's hard to understand that one day you will wake up and the person you live with is gone…
Since I have old parents, such events are threatening…..I saw my mother, sitting there in the corner- 40 years ago, she and her husband had taken a bus to Rawalpindi to see the girl for Chacha jee…the girl was B.A pass…her brother was M.A economics, the rishta was done, the couple had a son and daughter…and now, the woman was gone- forever…there was alot of noise when they came to pick the coffin, women screaming, men howling and one yell of Kalma-e-shahadat...shaky....
I wondered how Ammi felt right now, knowing the dead one for four decades...playing an active role in her life...It is then I realized how awful it would have been for her to mourn her own little one, to see them pick her up and take her away....I often forget her but she reminds me...now I know why she remembers her even when the World forgets....it took me 20 years to understand this....
Big chacha and Small chacha were married together…both young women entered the family as brides, only one was left now, mourning...
Her daughter kept saying that she gave her mother new shoes, and a new shawl when she was going to the hospital, as if she was a bride…and her mother waved her when she was going to the hospital, had she known she wasn't coming back- she would have gone with her……That's the way it is. We are such fools, we live without realizing this uncertainty ...