Guest column| Remembering mother, my perennial lighthouse

I vividly remember flying home with my mother, who had just been discharged from a hospital in Delhi after three long months of hospitalisation. We had just taken our seats when a concerned cabin crew member, noticing the pallour on my mother’s face, asked, “Is she well?”

“She was just discharged from the hospital this morning,” I replied. However, as the enquiries continued, I managed to choke out “cancer” as an explanation, hyper-aware of our gawking co-passengers. The ‘fit-to-travel certificate’, which I had the forethought to bring, thankfully sorted the matter.

My mother quietly kept gazing out of the window, and though I did my best to cheer her up, an eerie silence enveloped us. My mind flitted to the chocolates and ‘thank-you’ cards I had given to her doctors two days ago at her insistence, and I hoped that she would feel better in the comfort of her home.

However, it was not to be. She had been home merely a day when her health took a turn for the worse, and she had to be rushed to the hospital, where her heart sank three days later. The prolonged and painful cancer treatment had gone in vain.

It was a rare pain to see her lifeless. With her passing, our home reverted into a house, mere brick and mortar, a shell of its former self.

After all, it was my mother, who had kept us all together. She had been our lighthouse, ensuring the well-being of each family member.

She could read my brother and me like a book. Whenever she perceived that either of us was sad or troubled, she would coax us to share our worries. The question, “What are you thinking?” and “Where’s that smile?” were always at the tip of her tongue.

If I ever criticised my dad for being too strict or hardly talking to us, her empathetic words would assuage all complaints and rouse our love for him.

She was the go-to person whenever faced with any decision. When I decided to take arts in Class 11, she was the only one who understood my choice. When I started working, she would always ask if I was enjoying it. While I was abroad, she would always ask if I had eaten, rather than how much I was earning, which was all other people wanted to know. She was always proud see my articles in print, and expressed her appreciation.

She helped me conquer my anger, admittedly my greatest weakness. “Without anger, life is so easy and light,” she would say. I cherished the long conversations I had with her, which at times continued late into the night.

As a child, I feared mathematics, so each summer vacation, she would hire the best tutors in town to help me. In the letters she sent to our boarding school in Nabha, she would remind my brother and me that it was our fear which made the subject seem tough. “Take mathematics as a game, not a burden,” she would say. Thankfully, both my brother and I have preserved those letters and we revisit them every now and then, whenever we miss her. Her beautiful penmanship reminds me of her smiling face, and matchless grace. At the end of each letter, she would write, “Stay happy. It’s everything.”

When our maternal great-grandmother passed away, she kept writing to us about her deteriorating health for several months. When we returned home during our vacations, we learnt that she had passed away several months ago. “I wanted to slowly prepare you for this, since you were so close to her,” she explained. It was her exceptional empathy and bravery, which helped her keep the devastating news to herself for months.

Unfortunately, today, she too is not with us. She passed away on Mothers’ Day in 2013. Therefore, whenever I come across Mothers’ Day celebrations, a sadness envelops me.

However, I try to remind myself of the English novelist George Eliot’s words, “Our dead are never dead to us until we have forgotten them.” And how could someone ever forget their mother?

rameshinder.sandhu@gmail.com

(The writer is an Amritsar-based freelance contributor)