25 long years

My mother died in 2001 at 69. Really, I lost her years before that to a massive stroke. No, time does not heal anything.

I am three months old in my mother’s lap at our house in Kolkata, India.

Dear Ma:

9,125: That’s the number of days that have passed since you left me the last time.

15,912: That’s the number of days I’ve spent since you left me the first time.

You suffered a massive stroke on my 20^th birthday and miraculously, you survived. But you were no longer the woman I knew as my mother. You changed after the stroke did to your brain what a tornado does to a small town. It left your cognition mangled and twisted like debris. It left you trapped in your body; your entire left side immobile and unable. Yes, unable. Unable to touch me, caress me, hold me. Unable to tell me all the things only a mother can tell a daughter.

On this day, May 19, when you died, I mean actually died, exactly a quarter century ago, I shudder to think how time — you know, the time that is supposed to heal? — has formed into foe. It has not faded my love. It has not eased my pain.

But it has started erasing you. I cannot see your face the way I once did: more vivid than any Florida sunset. I cannot place the exact place where a mole sat, sometimes rather imperiously. I cannot trace the curves of your skin, 69 years old and yet silkier than any of your sarees. I cannot smell your smell, a heady mix of Lakme powder, Nivea and you. Your mouth was minty fresh from a daily routine of washing and flossing. You were always so fastidiously clean, even with your broken body and impaired mind.

Time left you on this day, 25 unending years ago. It left you behind and now, I strain to make you whole again. I close my eyes and try hard to bring you to the forefront. Some images are faded and I am straining to see them through gauzy muslin; others burst before me.

You and I lying in your bed wide awake, before the sun has even had a chance to cast its first light. It is a warm morning in March in Kolkata but not yet clammy. Baba died just seven days ago. He was your husband of 51 years, my father of 38 years. You howled as Baba left in a white hearse from our home on Ballygunj Circular Road for the very last time.

Ma in her wheelchair at our flat in Kolkata. Despite everything, she never complained or stopped smiling.

On this morning, we are tethered and yet adrift, drowning sometimes in our tears. You turn on the radio — music was your joy giver — and we listen together to the songs that you love, the songs of Tagore. On this morning, it is as though the station producers have tapped into our sorrow. They play our songs. The ones you and I sang together. And one that seems Tagore wrote for this very morning. Rodono Bhora e Boshonto. Never before has spring arrived so laden with sorrow. We try to sing the words; you once had a beautiful voice that collected medals on the stage and earned you a recording gig at His Master’s Voice. But your voice cracked after the stroke and your vocal cords cannot hold a note. Now, your voice, our voices, are off key with grief that has hollowed out everything.

Other images are not as clear. We are again lying in bed, this time on a mattress on the floor of the bedroom in our split-level house in Tallahassee. A friend has slept over and when he leaves, you crawl downstairs and tell me to lie down next to you on the mattress; it’s far more accommodating than my French Provincial twin bed. I know you are holding me. I know you are talking to me. For hours. I am sure we discuss my boyfriend or my prickly relationship with my friends Pankaj and Reshma. I am sure we talk about the people who hurt me and things that upset me. I am sure you comfort me when I tell you my troubles. But I can no longer recall what you are saying. I can no longer feel your embrace.

I try desperately to bring it all back. It was such a beautiful night, Ma. Just you and I. It was perhaps one of our last mother-daughter conversations; I so wish there had been so many more, But more than four decades have raced by and time has stomped over memories and denied me any more.

You lived 19 years after the stroke, bound to a wheelchair, bound by your own body and mind. Yet, you smiled and laughed. Forgive me, but I did not understand then how hard it must have been, Ma. I cannot list here my regrets — all the things I did not say, all the things I did not do. Not a day goes by that they do not haunt me.

But the memories, Ma. How do I preserve them? How do I keep you close to me?

I keep some of your things in a dresser drawer. A shawl, a nightgown, handkerchiefs. They still smell of you ever so faintly. I know in time that, too, will vanish. They are just things, I know. But they are your things and I do not have many of your things.

I think today of the last time I ever saw you. You looked so peaceful in your bed at Belle Vue Clinic. You had ended your struggle and the calmness that left you on the day of your stroke returned. Just for a few hours before the flames took you away from me. Forever.