The unbearable certainty of the end

నువ్వైనా నీ నీడైనా ఏనాడైనా నా తోడౌనా

(The day when you or at least your shadow might become my companion...)

That's a snippet from a Telugu song from a movie made in 1979- a man's deepest thoughts about his woman expressed in the simplest of words, sung by the finest, SPB. I only heard it for the first time yesterday during my music class, but I just cannot stop obsessing about it ever since. Full song here.

Speaking of movies, there's a running joke with my dad. We would be talking about a movie, an especially suspenseful one, and my dad discusses scene by scene in gory detail, and one of us impatiently asks- what happens in the end? Dad would coolly say- "the movie ends". It was annoying and funny at the same time and we would resolve (in vain) to not fall for dad's trap ever again.

The movie ends. Yes, I am ignoring sequels for a second here. The movie always ends. Regardless of what happens in those 2-3hours, at the end, it simply ends. Nobody starts watching a movie assuming that it will go on forever. Even the seemingly never-ending Bollywood movies end. Same with life. In fact, end is the only certainty in life, and yet, in our culture, we rarely talk about it. Recent tragic events in my immediate and extended families, and in my friends circle, however, put death on the front and center of my thought process.

Roughly ten days prior to my in-laws' passing, my firstborn handed me a spool of wool that she was knitting a scarf out of, and asked for my help untangling it. I am a self-proclaimed untangler-extraordinaire of the family, I somehow relate untangling wool to simplifying life from the complicated web it often is. All of the prior untangling missions my daughter set me up on took less than ten minutes, so I did not think this one would be much trouble. I started working on it during my lunch hour. I realized 30min later that the woolly mess in my hands was more tricky than any of my previous missions. I subconciously challenged myself to fix it, as if fixing it would fix all the Covid out of my in-laws' family that just got tested positive.

Minutes turned to hours and days. I would wake up every morning, and tell myself, today I will finish untangling the wool and that would, in turn, bring about the positive change for my family. I would go to bed at night feeling that I have let my family down, wool still untangled. Things took a turn for the worse starting May 8th when both in-laws in ICU turned critical. My husband and I barely slept the next 48 hours. I barely stopped working on the wool, despite it looking just as tangled, if not more, than when I started. I finally threw it out of my sight when we lost my in-laws, on May 10th, within hours of each other. I failed them. I just simply could not untangle them out of the Covid web. Their journey on this planet came to a conclusion. It was the end, and I never felt more guilty or helpless as I did while watching their cremation on whatsapp calls.

I regret not talking to my father-in-law more often, for he had so many amazing experiences to share. I regret not recording my mother-in-law's beautiful voice as she sang every day during her prayers. Their death brought me face to face the biggest realization of my life. Life is so damn short! I feel fortunate to at least have spent time making a video for my father-in-law last summer, and I reminisce fondly my blog post highlighting my mother-in-law from a few years ago.

I have been making an effort to verbalize my thoughts more since then. I made it a priority to talk to acquaintances that are grieving loss or going through rough times. I insisted on communicating my heart-felt note to my dear school principal fighting a terminal illness in the hospital, instead of waiting for him to come home- for he sadly never did come home. I sent notes to friends that I have lost touch with. I am talking to my parents and sibling every day. I am doing my best to listen into the silence that some of my relationships fell into. Just like that, I managed to untangle the spool of wool, two months later.

The end is unbearably certain, whether it comes in the way of loss of life, or loss of relationships. We have all those appreciative words for the dear ones after they depart, nostalgic memories of relationships that vanished into thin air. Words that ultimately remain unheard. Feelings that remain unacknowledged. The curtains are already drawn. It is "The End".

Untangled. Wool or life, I can never tell.