very thoughtful ending anusheh..at a different level of perception, maybe somewhere it is the power of their choices which have manifested this way...

I truly dont have words to express how I feel right now ...

All I can remember is the quote -

"May God grant us the serenity to accept the things we cannot change, courage to change the things we can, and wisdom to know the difference"

- Reinhold Niebuhr

God bless

Anusheh,

beautiful post! a similar experience happened to us recently - we lost a brother, a buddy suddenly; a person who brought joy and calm, someone who enriched our life.. he leaves behind a young wife and baby son.. The questions you pose here reflect what we (as a family and circle of friends) face as we grieve and mourn for him..

Within a month of his passing, his wife Swati, a quiet unassuming housewife until that shock, amazed us, showed us all that true love is about courage. She has taken up his work (he was an architect and a builder) and has been dedicated to completing his unfinished assignments with help of friends. Inspite of the cruel rituals,senseless traditions that are imposed on "widows", she emerged from it all, in silence yet forceful enough to chart her own course that would truly be theirs..From Swati, I learnt about dignity in grief, courage & the power of love..

personally for me, he is with all of us. in a small memorial that we had for him, i asked each one of us these same questions; our lives will continue to be enriched by all that he brought into our life; in my small way of remembering him, and feeling his presence, my efforts everyday reflect what he represented, what he wanted for me, and how attentive and sensitive he was towards each one of us.. his passing taught us to treasure and work towards happiness in everyday life and in our interactions amongst each other.

Thanks Anusheh, for sharing that beautiful post and poem.

love

thats a lovely share sukanya...as i read ur share, gratitude wells up in my mind when i think of my mom and the travails she had to go through as a young widow at 37..this was 25 years back when senseless rituals and other inhibitors were even more pronounced...and i was a difficult son at 14, going through my own teen blues...as it was an unexpected and untimely demise of my dad, even the requisite property transfer documents and other things were not in order and we had to wait 5 years before we could even access our bank accounts as those were the days of estate duties and the like...we had support from close extended family...but we had to face a lot of inhibiting circumstances...if i look back she has done a great job of it...if i am even sitting here today and using a computer, she has been at the helm of the struggle to reach here...

Anusheh,

this post moved me.

I can say that what you ask is what happens...that is...love is purified by death.

It might look odd...but if you have seen Star Wars Episode IV...when Darth Vader is about to strike Obi Von Kanobi, Obi Von looks at him and says something like " If u strike me then you make me more powerful" or something like that.

Similarly, people in front of us, in front of our eyes, represent manifestations that are necessary in various phases of ones life.

When the time to be together elapses, they pass away....only to be more tangibly remembered and pined for in the mind. They move to a more subtle plane of affection.

In the immortal movie MADHUMATI's lyrics, Dilip Kumar sings...

Toote huve khwabon ne...humko ye sikhaya hain...dil ne jise paaya tha...aakhon ne gavaaya hain.

( Broken dreams have taught me that the one lost to the eyes, the heart had loved)

In this scenario, love of the eyes....will now forever be a love of the mind and the heart.

a few years ago a friend of mine died. she was a very beautiful girl. her brother is a friend of mine. the daily sessions of crying and wanting to see her face again used to get really heavy on our minds and health.

so i suggested something to him. I said "why dont u think that she is happily married to a wonderful guy in the USA? only think that she has had a lifelong fight with you and you will never see her again."

it was a little harsh ask on him...but he did try it and felt a little nice for sometime...but reality again sunk in and he became depressed again.

what i am saying is...sometimes it is not necessary for someone to be present in front of the eyes to be loved. when someone goes away...our love for that person intensifies and becomes more pure.

u reinforce something anusheh seems to indicate...absence makes the heart grow fonder and possibly more forgiving i would presume...than in real time space shares...

Anusheh,

You have left us with so many questions that we try and avoid, hoping that when one of has to go it will be 'I' and not the one I love.

Lovely post!

Aachi

What a wise and poignant post. You truly are a voice from the realm of wise spirits. Anusheh had been gifted much by this friend who was instrumental in teaching her a skill for her NGO in Pakistan which she brought to India and now has recreated in wonderous ways for Ifsha. She was waiting to share the work and her achievements with him, waiting to invite him here and express her gratitude for his Grace. And without a word he was gone. In that moment that she heard her head kept whirling into why she did not get that last chance. All I could say to her was that her desire to share it with him has also placed him in a space of being able to be her guiding angel here now. And truly since that day she experiences his blessings and support in myriad ways.

You see in that moment of loss all she wanted to so be able to express to his family what a rare and dear gift he had been in her life and she could not find the words for the immense emotion of loss and gratitude that she experienced. And suddenly she remebered the beautiful Golden Buddha she had in Pakistan and she had it delivered with a note to Masako and his parents. That beautiful elegy, gratitude that she expressed through that gift allowed her to access him in continum and the sense of loss was healed.

I would like to add that gratitude is simply the most critical and totally ABSENT aspect of human life. And in essence I have discovered it as the most powerful corridor of connectivity. To life, to love, to learning, to pain and to the Masters who light the lamp of wisdom in our life, gratitude is the only highway for flowing uninterrupted into the force of our own expansion.

Sundar,
You are right. I think it is so probably because we take for granted things and people in front of us. when they are lost, they are lost to reaction or reciprocation.

then whatever love we have for them invariably turns pure as there is no expectation, and we kiss the helm of pure affection for that one moment when we connect with them in our hearts.

jasjit,

you are absolutely right about gratitude. after your post i can imagine how sad anusheh must have felt.

i used to feel very bad when someone i loved passed away. but through time i have learnt to tell myself that the stop where he/she got down will come again and we will be together in much more tangible ways.

aachi, i guess, moments of love experienced can enrich a whole lifetime...and possibly beyond.as jasjit mentioned in her comment, gratitude is conspicuous by its absence and in its presence, connectivity is a real time manifest even in absence...in india, we have so many beautiful stories of the the guru-shishya relationship which exhibit this beautiful quality in an unconditional space share...

Thanks for all the moving stories everyone.

Aachi Star Wars is a favourite. Those lines you quote are extremely relevant and I enjoyed reading them. So right when you say that love is not restricted to physical presence. But I guess death is a very hard one for people to deal with, especially if it is the passing away of a person who one has had unresolved issues with or unexpressed emotions which suddenly weigh heavy in the permanency of loss. I always find it so tragic that though death is the single most certain thing in life very few focus on it. If they do, it usually creates fear and that leads to a whole set of distortions within.

Jasjit gratitude is truly the only way in which the heart can connect and perpetuate life. Thanks for that.

Shubhz that is one of my favourite prayers.

Sundar/Sukanya, truly life is benevolent in the way it persists through love and pain to awaken us to our light.

love
anusheh

dearest anusheh - what a lovely powerful post that was. thank you x

Anusheh
Very moving indeed. The courage and committment that love bestows on us is a life-affirming experience. Death is meaningless in this process - just another phase of separation.
As Rumi said: "A lifetime without Love is of no account"; therefore, life's sustenance flows out of love and in many cases separation only makes it permanent....
However, your ending leaves an open question which has no simple answers...

RR

Dear Anusheh
This is a very thought provoking piece.
Yes, I also believe that love is purified by death, more so, because the impurities of love like demand, possessiveness, worries just do not continue to bother us.
The day my father died, next morning when I gotup, I realized that I am feeling so secured about his presence now - no chance of loosing him anymore.

Buas

Dearest Buas thank you. How beautifully you have articulated loss "The day my father died, next morning when I gotup, I realized that I am feeling so secured about his presence now - no chance of losing him anymore". Truly in death there is nothing and no one to lose anymore. Whereas in life love is lost and found over and over again.

love
Anusheh

tremendous courage! may be its her love for her husband that has given her the strength to take it in her stride so gracefully. love can do wonders. any other girl in her shoes would have been shattered. but i must say i admire her positive attitude in life. we have much to learn from her.