bereavement scares me

April 30th, 2006

Bereavement (adjective - Bereaved ) : Suffering the loss of a loved one . sorrowful through loss or deprivation .

36 hours before now my dad came to know about the critical condition of my aunt ( dad’s older brother’s wife ) , that she had been admitted to the ICCU . Around 4 hours after that i came to know about it from my mother , when she was sort of showing her resentment about not being notified earlier … and so ironical , that the neglect became the primary if not the sole reason for my aunt’s death. Yes , she expired within 8 hours within then , leaving most of us stunned and shocked , without even leaving us the chance to feel any sorrow , pain or anger …. just simply stunned.

What happened in the next 14 hours was a whirlwind excecution of Processes . My aunt left behind her 3 daughters , the oldest of whom performed her last rites - yes , her daughter and her aged mother . Long time back, when my grandfather expired i recall, several men and women gathered , cried , discussed how they were connected with him, how they remembered him. even yesterday many people gathered but i could actually only hear the voice of my aunt’s mother and see my cousin sister’s watery eyes. Most other people were either nodding or going with the flow and waiting for the ‘process’ to go to the next stage.
when we reached the Burning ghat ( electric furnace ), there were almost 6 parties prior to us. I would say around 4 of the parties were from slum/village and they had come in huge numbers. On contrary here , among these people many of them were crying , sniffing, crying out loud …. although many of them might not be actually meaning it ( so i felt … i am surely a unfair judge , but at that point a few of them looked like doing it just because they were supposed to…. Why i think so is coz : just after the sequence where they were crying out loud , all of them gathered around the body of their departed relative/friend to take a group photo and people were actually shoving each other to fit in the camera’s diameter !! ) . There was another instance … in the final moments before the body is pushed into the huge fiery cave , family members are allowed to see it . It is surely not a pretty site ( i saw it , so i know) … but there were these people who waited in line anxious to see it and when it happened , they gave a blood curdling scream and started throwing hands and legs in fit and the security guards had to literrally drag them outside and still they would not stop the blood curdling scream . Within 2 minutes of that , the very same persons had calmed down and were as fit and normal like when they were in the line to see the event. Quite amazing.

Once back home , many people had started acting even more oddly . I heard one of my aunt’s sister’s shooed some people from her house . I am guessing its just out of loss of mind because of the trauma they are going thru . But nevertheless , I am seeing all this from the outside , still and i am only seeing what is happening … not even closely feeling i am sure . And all i can think is this is SCARY . I dont wanna think what will happen to me or what i will do , when i loose someone so close .

Entry Filed under: General