Cheerio!

Personal Post Alert! 

Bawls and Scowls and their antidote

When I was a tiny child, little more than a baby, I would bawl in protest at jokes and teasing I didn't enjoy. To boot, I was a curmudgeon who didn't enjoy surprises - I still don't react very well to then. Dad found a trick to stop the bawling and make me smile by standing before me and mimicking me. Each time I puckered up my face he'd chant "boo-bu-bu-waaaaah!"  and in time it became a game that turned me into a cheerful kid. Till the end of his days he'd tease me about this and thereafter mom continued to tease me. 

When I graduated from babyhood and became what was deemed a sensible being, I retained some of my silliness. Here's how Dad (himself a scowler and a frowner at times - I got the frown from him)  thought he'd fix this this by starting to  sing a song "You've Got To Smile When You Say Goodbye" to me whenever I broke in sobs on parting from loved ones, typically after a vacation together.
Dad pursued law in London from 1934-39 and traveled through Europe during some tense times in the build up to WW2. While his experience changed him in deep and lasting ways, the lighter side of life didn't miss him and he got himself a gramophone(stolen in 1971 by a lumpen thief who broke into our house, leaving him heartbroken) while he was there and a whole lot of western music records(78 rpm played with steel needles that came in little tin boxes with pictures of Nipper, the HMV dog). It was his first exposure and he got hooked to the popular music of the day as well as to Opera :) - maybe that was popular music too, who knows?

I'm guessing he lifted the word "Cheerio" from this song because that was his signature when he left the house to go to work or anywhere for that matter and we all picked it up from him. He also had his special knock (ok I'll record me doing that one day on the self same 95 year front door of my home and share here) 

No parting is final

Why am I rambling on about my dad and tears and frowns and goodbyes? Because today it's all of 27 years since he crossed over - quietly at 5:30 in the morning; not at home but in an ICU he had to be in overnight where he was surrounded by familiar friendly people who cared for him. I think he preferred it that way and so did we. 

His last word to me, said with a wistful smile after he was admitted and put on oxygen was "Sorry". He was trying to make light of it, but I understood.  He was smiling but I looked into his blue eyes (yes his eyes were blue) and their color seemed to have taken a green  tinge. I understood, he understood. I touched him one last time and reassured him "don't say sorry, say goodnight" and he answered "goodnight". I smiled, I did not cry.

A day and half later, when he left the house for the last time, borne aloft lovingly by four relative "strangers", and one a friend who had grown up in this house, I didn't cry. I held my mom's hand and we both held fast on to our smiles. We followed him down. My heart twisted just a tiny bit as they set him down on the pavement for reasons I never figured out. He was light but maybe their arms felt momentarily weary? Maybe the earth that had rung out to his eager footsteps as he had trodden that very path for the first time in 1948 to enter this house and make a new life for himself, wanted to embrace him and bless him on his journey forth into another adventure? In moments he was a vision melting into the distance as the vehicle slowly rolled away. "Bye, Cheerio" I whispered, clutching mom's hand. She was still holding on to her smile and the song slowly played in my head. 

Ascension

 

I had poured this out of my system the year I lost my brother. Today it's three years to the day and I need to share this snapshot of raw emotion before I transcend what remains of it. This was one of the notes FB devoured during its anti-notes pogrom after making fake promises to safeguard our published notes. Luckily I archived my account when FB threatened to ban me as the contents are a treasure chest of shared experience over eight years, experience through an identity Chakra Incognita that I had created for myself and which meant something vital to me. An identity that amused a few and delighted many, an identity that FB stripped me of at the risk of losing my account. An identity that FB helpfully redefined for me as a brand :) Regardless, we lose nothing when we are close to our inner selves. Likewise we never really lose those nearest and dearest to us - we only change the way we connect with them. Sadly I lost the beautiful words of comfort that were posted in the comments as FB forgot to archive those. The good news is that those who commented are even closer as friends now. 

 

And I share again the words I wrote back in 2018 on his birthday coming 12 days after his passing, trying to make peace with this transformation of a living person into one more mysterious, mythical entity in another dimension.

 I don’t know either why I chose the Epiphany scene to illustrate the ascension. Don’t miss the stairway to heaven on the right. There even seems to be a chair for the next one in the queue to wait their turn. I feel like I have been acting as a channel for the past three months and often think I have lost agency in what I do. Clearly they have been the strangest ever three months, riddled by inexplicable physical ills and the lowest mood or energy levels I have known in ages. Perhaps no one can guess the monumental effort that went into hauling myself out on those trails(click the link for photos of the tribute trail for my brother a year later), the acute loneliness and sense of desertion I felt during those times. It was just I in a world entirely peopled by strangers. Considering that frame of mind, the pictures(scroll for more) show many joyful and colorful facets and I am surprised by it! I have had this overpowering urge to write, yet in my predicament of grief I feel judged. Today is my dear brother’s birthday. Coincidentally it is the day of “ascension” when Hindus are released from the period of mourning. The original Epiphany was a day of recognizing by the Wise, acknowledging and celebrating a birth with gifts. And the gift of ascension seems to be today’s offering. This comes a day after the soul is considered to have joined the ancestors wherever they are(I have no clue where they are, only know that I have access to one or other of them at all times). While I have never taken any of these time-frames literally(a quick glance at Manusmriti will tell you the discriminatory rules that are applied) and always sensed it was a structure created to restore “order” and proceed with business as usual, this time I feel a set of uncanny coincidences. The day he left behind a body that no longer served him, to fly free into an alterverse where he could continue to live as he needed and wanted to, happened to be the day of his birth star. To get ones head around this concept, read this: “If you draw a line from where you were born, at the time you were born, to the moon, the Janma Nakshatra is the star constellation that the line would pass through.” On 3rd January apparently the line did just that :) This probably makes more sense to him considering his interest in astronomy than it does to me. With my psychic propensities and my uncanny quest for mystical connections, it struck me like a sign of birth. Of birth as the person he was meant to be, whatever that might mean. And in a way that was reassuring. There seems to have been perfect divine timing behind his exit from this dimension. And while it has been most agonizing for his nearest and dearest who witnessed this process with a mixture of trepidation and hope, swinging wildly at times between the two, it seems like it was an easy walkover for him. I have spent night after shivery winter night pondering the nature of our subtle bodies and their connection with the gross, how and when that disconnection between the two takes place, where and what part of the “soul” carries its imprint, where our memories go and whether they have multiple copies. My IT head periodically powers itself on and starts to analyse these elements in terms of contemporary tech. My left and right brain come together in a collaboration to crack open these mysteries. The motivation for it all is to know the means to stay connected with loved ones and to be sure not to lose the connection ever. Nothing higher or more exalted than that. Today I woke to a shivery dawn and it is a foggy morning. Thick fog that doesn’t seem too dirty but is chilling me to the bone, the last thing I plan to go walking in. Ergo my day’s plans have been flipped on their head. I await a proper sunrise. And a new awakening.

PS: 3/1/2021 - I am happy to say that 2020 has brought a flood of new friends into my life in my own city and a strengthening of bonds with old friends the world over. "It was just I in a world entirely peopled by strangers" - feelings such as  this are part of a history that will not repeat itself. I close on that note of faith, hope and love