Reflection

I don't like the way she's looking at me. I can feel her judging eyes piercing through my being to stare at all my flaws. I know she's going to go home and laugh with all her friends about what a fool I am. Her eyebrows are raised in high arches looking at me with disgust and wondering how a creature like me survives on this planet. I can see the bitterness and anger lurking behind the gazes she is giving me but she is quick to hide her vulnerability behind her dagger stare. I can feel her unhappiness from far away and yet I am scared of her.

She looks like she wants to walk toward me. I can feel the hesitation in her shifty movement. She stops twitching and continues to stare with no qualms. She doesn't care that judging someone like that may come off as rude. As she stares at me I stare back. I am drawn to her. The more she stares at me trying to decipher my story, the more I want to know hers. 

I feel uncomfortable. Her eyes are so similar to mine and yet so different. I can feel her frustration and confusion at the world and I feel like she can feel mine. I push back tears reliving memories in my mind and I see her lift her hand to her eye. Can she hear me? Is this as weird for her as it is for me?

We stand there for a while. Staring. Its seems like the world around us has ceased to exist and in time there is only her and me. I feel sympathy at the person she's become. I hate the world for making her like that. I don't like the way she has been taken advantage of. I can sense her strength from where I'm standing but I can see she has given in to her weakness. I recognise her in me and me in her and yet there is this distinction. 

I want to talk to her but I'm scared. Her emptiness might be contagious. Has she built these walls around her to protect herself from the cruel world or has she put them up in anger? I want to help. I want to hold her hand and bring her to my side but she is too caught up in the acceptance her world has suddenly given her that she can't see me anymore.

I want to turn away. I feel haunted by her. And yet I am stuck. Stuck staring and judging her. Maybe I will go home and laugh about her with my friends. Will I? I am lost in her. I can feel myself starting to break. I want that acceptance she has. I want that confidence she has. But I can't lose my essence. 

She is me. I am her. I just want this mirror to shatter. 

Aji

One would think that at twenty-two it would become seemingly easier to understand life. One would imagine that it gets easier and the strength one needs to cope with challenges increases with age. And while that may be true for most things, life can throw whatever curve balls at you but you are never truly prepared for losses- especially those of people around you.

Mentally its easy to understand that life has a expiry date and eventually death is inevitable. However, no matter how mentally prepared you are, emotionally you can never be prepared enough.

I lost my paternal grandmother yesterday. Mentally I think I was prepared. It was inevitable and I think most of us knew it was coming. But it doesn’t really hit you till it happens. It has been hours and hours since I was woken up to be told that Aji had passed on and even though it hasn’t fully sunk in and I still feel like she’s around its taking everything I have not to break down completely.

After spending the last seven years living with her I think I have enough memories to get me through a lifetime and yet they feel like they aren’t enough. I wish I could just hear her call my name one last time or wake up to her singing as I did for so many years. I wish that I could hear laugh while she slapped my hand as I played with her skin as I have since I was a child. I wish I could just smell that smell she had and I wish that I could hold her hand just one last time. I wish we could sit together and watch a Julie Andrews or Audrey Hepburn movie one last time- preferably Sound of Music or My Fair Lady, her favourites. I wish I could rest my head in her lap one last time as she patted it and told me stories.  But I can’t.

I know she is in a better place. I imagine her sitting on a swing, singing and laughing. I imagine her and Tata (my paternal grandfather) sitting together in a sunny lawn, him looking absolutely dapper as always smoking his pipe and her happy to be with him again. I imagine her playing Bridge and enjoying herself thoroughly. I imagine her and my Nana (even though I never met him) discussing intellectual things and reminiscing about Pakistan while they sit on rocking chairs. But mostly I imagine her sitting with both my grandfathers as they look down on all of us.

I feel lucky to have been able to spend so much time with her, not because she was my grandmother and she loved me, but mostly because she was an amazing person. Even though a lot of my memories are stories my parents have told me, I have learnt a lot from her in these many years that I remember. But what I loved the most and what I’ll miss the most is the way she smiled when I did something to make her happy- from sitting with her to stealing her walking stick and acting like her. She was a happy person, a soft person and a caring person, but mostly she was a person full of immense love.

I pray that she has found that happiness that she wanted and I hope that she will always be smiling down on me and the rest of her family. I hope that she has found peace wherever she is.

Aji, I will always love you. I will always miss you. But I know you are always with me and that I will never truly be alone or without you…