what is this, this torrent of emotions, this flood of things left unsaid, that are fighting to make it to the surface, to pour out all at once in a stream of consciousness, no specific joint thought but rather a series of sentences – spoken, heard, felt – all flowing over one another, racing to get out there as fast as they can?
what is this, this series of words left unsaid, feelings left unfelt, emotions left untended, feelings ignored at random and at will as time passes by, just because right now isn’t convenient and later seems indeterminately comforting?
where am i, then, if not lost? drowning? adrift? in the midst of all of these realizations, echoes, memories, feelings, words, emotions, desires, angers, sadnesses and resentments?
***
december begins every year with an impending sense of doom, primarily because the first day of the month is my birthday. there are the usual concerns about aging, the usual wistful longings for a youth rapidly passing by, and a sense of sadness at all that i could have accomplished within the past year that was left undone. this is accompanied by this unspeakable yet haunting worry of what if: what if this is the last year, this is the last minute, the last second, the last breath? what if there is no more beyond this year, no more existence, no more happiness, no more sadness, no more emotion, no more moments, no more memories and no more feelings?
in recent years, this has been followed by a tumult of worry, because i can feel my body getting older. this human shell, this body – it’s nothing but an endless series of cycles – sleep, digestion, bloodflow, excretion, reproduction. yet if just one of this multitude of cycles gets disrupted, i can increasingly feel it echoing through my body, disrupting every other cycle in turn. when i was younger, these disruptions meant nothing – i could just as easily recover easily from a night without sleep, a day rolled in to night in to another day, with just one good night’s sleep.
sleep is no longer the savings account with no minimum balance that it once was – it is now a credit account, with a minimum balance of eight hours, the lack of which means an intense yet difficult struggle to catch up with lost hours at every opportunity. at the end of the week, the body simply refuses to get out of bed at a reasonable hour, as if the extra ten minutes between snooze alarms would equal several hours of lost sleep.
and it isn’t just sleep anymore. i constantly feel less healthy, get sick much more often, and coughs, colds and fevers don’t seem to want to go away. i eat less, feel exhausted most times, and climbing even a flight of stairs results now in the resurgence of pain in the knees.
am i growing older or aging, i ask myself. am i all right, or is there something wrong? am i supposed to feel sick and tired of always being sick and tired?
***
then, last year, on my birthday, i got the news that i had been dreading for almost eight months. i heard it come from my sister’s lips, heard it repeated by a doctor, and then heard both voices echo in my head for hours on end. in just two weeks, it was all over. and, fittingly, i was the only one there when it ended. and there are memories of those last few moments that keep flooding in to my head without pause. sometimes when i close my eyes, or when i’m alone with my thoughts, i see the body lying on the bed, trying to take a last breath. i hear the voice of the on-duty doctor softly yet urgently calling out, “sir.” i see the eyes flutter open once, take a look at the world, and then go blank.
within the next ten minutes, the body, surrounded by most of the family, was hooked up to a ventilator in the middle of an intensive care unit full of surprised yet anxious patients. i remember tears crawling down my sister’s cheeks as she tried to remember the most appropriate prayer to say. i remember the disappointed and hurt look on my brother’s face, and the sadness gripping my uncle like a demon come to tear away his soul. the sound of the orderly pounding on the body’s chest with half-hearted attempts at last minute cpr, trying to tease even an ounce of life into a body that was already turning blue and cold.
yet, beneath these images and memories are others which i do not let surface. memories of the final conversation i had with him, when he angrily told me to leave the room because he couldn’t sleep in my presence. memories of what i felt exactly at the moment he last opened his eyes, this futile yet bitter anger at him for not letting me stay, not letting me save his life. memories of what it felt like at the graveyard that night, when i watched his body be covered with soil – the utter helplessness, the utter sense of abandonment, the uncertainty of a future without his guidance and guardianship. memories of the last time i touched his skin, and how cold it felt beneath my fingers. memories of the bitter taste of the tears i had cried throughout that whole day. memories of being back in a house without the only other person i had shared it with for a long five years.
***
two weeks ago, it was the first anniversary of that fateful day. and in the midst of the memories, i didn’t let myself be overtaken by these memories. on one hand, i had just returned from a trip that represented the collapse of everything i had worked towards for just over six years, with the impending closure of a program that i had built from scratch, that i had refined over time, and that i had built in to one of the most innovative and yet potentially effective development projects in the history of the country. i had made it this far because i had been given the opportunity to innovate, and because those in charge believed just as much as i did in the power and potential of what i had been working on.
and then, in one fell swoop, they were gone, and so was the program, deemed to be replaceable and wasteful by someone who did not understand what i wanted to do, and had never considered how an approach different from her own could be effective. and so, the program, the team, the clients, the trust, the relationships i had built over six long years, all of it had been sentenced to death, with an imminent execution date. for most of those six years, this had been my life – my main passion, my main motivation, my love and my dedication. i had invested so much time, some of it unpaid even, in getting it to the point where it was, and now the ax had fallen. i had invested my entire creative process into the program, neglecting my blog, my music, my reading and my social life just to get the program to where it had been. but all that was over. it was time, yet again, to say goodbye to something else i’ve loved but had to lose.
and this time, the goodbye is even longer, the final gasping breaths much longer in duration, than what happened a year ago. perhaps a sudden death – a last long look at the world and then farewell – is much easier to tolerate.
in addition to the pain of losing my project, i didn’t have time to reminisce on memories either. the next week was finals week, for which i was grotesquely unprepared, and studying for seven courses is no laughing matter, especially since i hadn’t bothered to glance through the textbooks even once during the past two months. added to that was the awful sense of humor of one particular professor who issued the decree that i would have to submit, before the examinations, a 70 page hand-written assignment, on top of producing two original research papers for consideration for other courses. my immediate future, it seemed, consisted of over a week of constant all-nighters – a prospect i was not looking forward to, and one i could not even begin to relish.
and so i just didn’t have time to reminisce about these memories, to think about those long-buried emotions, to grieve for the loss i had suffered a year ago. i just had to put it all aside for a while, hoping to resume thinking about them when i was under less work and academic pressure.
but that’s the funny thing about memories, you see – you can’t just choose to think about them later. ever since my birthday at the beginning of the month, i’d been experiencing flashes of memories from a year before – not just the sights, sounds and smells of his final moments, but also memories of how i felt back then – the damned emotions i hadn’t allowed to come to the surface in months.
but i couldn’t predict when they’d come – they’d appear at times when i was alone, standing on the verandah soaking in the cool of the evening over a cigarette. they’d pop out of nowhere in the middle of studying particularly complicated chapters, or when i was sitting in my car staring out at interminable traffic jams. they’d emerge from the depths in the moments just before i fell asleep, in that hazy last stage of consciousness where it all seemed so real, like i was living those moments all over again.
and i just did not know what to do with these rapidly resurfacing memories. i didn’t have the time or the mental capacity to process them logically, and so i kept pushing them off until i could actually make the time.
***
the first death anniversary is generally the one most people remember, and so there are generally a host of events held on the occasion. for abbu, it hasn’t been any different, just grander in scale. there are several occasions planned in his memory, and so far i’ve only been able to make it to one of them. tomorrow morning is the launch of his autobiography – i remember seeing him staying up late at night for weeks on end looking through freshly typed page after page of what became the manuscript, trying to find the smallest typo or error to correct. but more than that i remember his final days in the hospital, when he instructed me to make sure that the book gets published one way or the other. and i feel sorry for not personally being able to make it happen, but instead somebody else had to take the initiative to make it happen.
the entire family is here, with all the attendant problems that that entails. since they arrived, the house has been whipped into a frenzy of all this remembering, and attempts to honor his memory. everyone is trying to honor him and his contributions in the best way they know how. everyone is trying to capture and preserve their memories of him – a documentary has even been produced to represent his life. but i really don’t know how to do any of this for myself.
abbu was many things to many people, but to me he was a father. we did not have the happiest or closest of relationships, and much of that is my own fault, but i knew he loved me and cared for me no matter what. i have many memories of him – some of which i remember, many of which i don’t and whose only proof are long-forgotten pictures in some album or the other. i might have had the shortest amount of time with him, but i do have some memories. is there a way for me to preserve some of these along with everybody else?
but i hesitate. i haven’t been asked to participate in the documentary or write anything in the booklet being produced for tomorrow, and i haven’t volunteered. i haven’t volunteered mainly because i keep thinking of those days in 1999, after we returned to dhaka after ammu passed away. i remember how my brother brought everyone together – abbu, the sisters, his wife, the aunts, and even my six year old niece – and recorded their memories of ammu on audiotape. i remember how everyone was included in this exercise the last time but me. and that’s when i learned that maybe my memories aren’t important enough for my family to want to preserve.
and so, here i am, one year later, trying to dredge up memories of abbu and preserve them in my own way. it’s funny what the mind chooses to remember and what it chooses to forget. much of the memories i have of him aren’t happy ones, but instead of moments when he hurt me most with things he said or things he did. but then there are some memories that i keep, deep down inside, which remind me of the kind of person he truly was. the time in grade 3 when he came to my classroom to talk to my teachers about other students who bullied me because of my skin color. the time he substituted for my mother at a mother’s day event at my elementary school, even though he was extremely busy. the times when he took me alone to our village home, where i saw him touch the lives of countless people in his own small way. the time when he sat at the back of my sister’s holud, crying loudly and visibly because my mother wasn’t there to witness that special moment for herself. the time when he would call me on my cell if i was late coming back home from work, to see if i was okay. the way he would knock on my door every day after i got home from work to ask if i was hungry and if i was okay. the times when i was sick, and he would rush a doctor over to the house to get a blood sample for tests. the times he took me to buy a pet dog, or brought one home as a surprise. and his last birthday, just four months before he was gone, when i took him against his wishes for dinner with the rest of the family at westin – he didn’t want to go that far because he was worried of feeling worse – but i remember how much he enjoyed the experience, once he got there, and how happy he was. his last eid ul azha, just a few days after the doctor had given us the bad news, when he was overjoyed to see that faraz had come to visit him, but was disheartened that he could not sit up and play with him.
and, seething below it all, those memories of his final moments, and how it felt when i knew he was gone and that, despite our arguments and disagreements, i would miss him tremendously.
***
this time, when my brother and his family first came to town, i told myself that i should be much more open and communicative with him. let bygones be bygones, i told myself – maybe he needs a brother too, and is willing to make the effort as well. but i was quickly proved wrong. his greetings and felicitations still feel like they are coming from a distant acquaintance, not immediate family. i’ve tried my best, but i haven’t yet been able to have a full conversation with him on anything. at the dinner table, if my sister-in-law is present, the conversation quickly degenerates into a conversation between her and me, while my brother converses with my wife. and those are real conservations, the kind i yearn to have with him: the ones he has with t, where he listens to what she has to say, and responds to whatever she says, and then listens to her response. every time i’ve tried to do that, tried to make my own point in the discussion and hoped for a response, i haven’t gotten one – the best i can hope for is a smile as he moves on to another topic, as if i hadn’t really said anything at all. when he’s around, i have this overwhelming sense that i am but a miniscule and irrelevant creature in his universe, or, more commonly, that i am but an outsider in this family, and my wife is the younger sibling he has always wanted and finally found. and now that he’s found her, i am inconsequential in the grand scheme of things in his universe.
and so i’ve withdrawn back in to myself once again. some things just aren’t worth the effort, and i’m a fool to try to bring about a change where none is possible.
***
some days this month began well – i woke up refreshed from a good night’s sleep. most days, i don’t get much sleep at night, because those quiet moments just when my eyes are about to shut are when all these things come flooding in to my brain – the uncertainty of my position at work, the pressure i am under academically, how i’ve lost a brother that i really needed, how i wish i had a family that loved and respected me, and, above all, those memories of fifteen brief days a year before, especially the final moments of that fateful fifteenth day. and so i lay awake every night, tossing and turning, trying to fight back against these worries, these insecurities, these sadnesses, and praying that their combined weight pressing down on my prone form in bed does not crush me to death, and that i awake to see another dawn.
the mornings start off well – and then i am either at work, reminded of the loss of the fruits of my hard work throughout my entire career and the instability and insecurity of the position i am currently in, or i am at home, and reminded almost instantly how insignificant my existence really is to the members of the family that i have been taught to love, respect, obey and hold on to tightly.
the best part of the day remains the night, just before i am ready to go to sleep. sitting on the bed, i listen to my wife breathing softly as she sleeps, while i focus work, academics or just plain relax. and those brief moments of silence, calm and peace are so important and valuable that they somehow get me through the next day in one peace, until i can be back in the same position again.
i don’t really have the option of talking to anyone any of this – mainly because the complex raft of emotions, feelings, stress and pain means that i don’t know where to begin, and how to make any of this make sense to someone else. also partly because the years of silence i’ve endured silently have made me feel like i’ve lost my voice – i don’t know if i could put any of this into spoken words so that i could explain to anyone just how helpless, sad, lonely and lost i feel throughout the day.
***
this december has been perhaps the worst of all those that i’ve experienced thus far. but there are still three days left. the academic pressure is gone now, the situation at work is slowly degrading to a stressful but still an uncomfortable yet bearable status quo, and my disappointment in my family seems almost tolerable, especially since they are only here for a few more days.with the academic pressure gone, i should now be able to get sufficient rest, and if not, there’s always trusty old dormicum. i still don’t know what to do with those snippets of memories from one year ago that randomly pop up in my perception, but i might just now have the time and the mental capacity to process them and grieve properly for the first time this month.
so here’s to a more stable three days, and a much happier 2011.