POEME: Dialogues with Mother: XII

Dialogues with Mother: XII

It has been long
since I spoke to you, Mother.

You are no more.

An atheist,
I cannot give myself comfort
in the delusion that you are happy
in some distant heaven somewhere.

You left this world
more than six years back.
But, for me
you still exist.
You are still there.

Of course, I had made my peace
with you
long before you stopped existing.
For I knew
that you will one day onward
not be there, and I will still be there.
For a while.
I knew I would miss you.
I knew I would want you again
close to me, so that I could
sit by you, resting my back,
or my head on you.

I knew I would miss all the pains
that we gave each-other.
I knew that if I did not make up to you,
I would regret not being able to do that
later.  So, I did that.
I made up to you.
I was by your side all the time
in your last years.  I did not allow
any regrets to linger.
And I forgave you.

I think you forgave me too.
For all the real and imagined pains that I gave you.
I know it, since you gave me all the letters
that you had written to others
condemning me.  I know it,
since you even gave me that Will and Testament
cancelled
in which you had disowned me.
I know it, since you truly smiled,
during those days, years.
Perhaps, for the first time in my life,
I saw you smile days on end.
I like to think that it was because
of all the love that I shared with you.
And because,
there was no one else
that you interacted with, then.
So, I am perhaps
not too far off the mark.

But, Mother,
those years and that happiness
was not quite enough.  Not for me.
Yours, you knew.
And never shared.
But so many years after your death,
I still have an empty space in my heart.
A humongous empty space.
Nothing fills it.
No one fills it.
Nothing and no one can.
Ever.
For no one will ever
be so completely dependent on me, so thoroughly limited
in their connection with the world, as you were.
Your only connection
to the world was your son.
Your only son.
Your only child.

For all the pains that you gave me,
for all the limitations that you placed on me,
for all the negations that you heaped on me,
for not letting me be me,
and for all the success you had in breaking all my bonds
with everyone other than you,
I am not upset with you.

I knew long long ago,
that I would never be able to connect
with the world without you.
For you had forged me so.
And I am in no position
to reforge myself.  And honestly,
I do not even want to do it:
I am the only real heritage
that I have of yours.
I would not want to lose that too.

Mother, you were a flawed being.
But then who is not?
You had your pains and your struggles and your scars.
If I had to go through all that,
I would have been a much worse person
than the worst person I know.
You still managed to be a great mother.
Not a perfect one,
but great anyway.
I still remember all the pains
that you gave me.
But, who cares, Mother,
those made me tough.

You are laughing, Mother?
Yes, let me also laugh with you.

-

But after, the laughter, now,
let me assure you, Mother,
that hard-bodied, loud macho men are not tough men.
They are brittle.
They break easy.
My toughness is of the variety that you may not recognize:
I take all the shit the world,
indeed, all that my own beloveds give me
and I still love them all.
I still love the world.
I still love humen.
This is my variety of toughness, Mother:
I remain what I am,
no matter what.
Strength of any material, including human,
is defined as its ability
to withstand an applied load, or stress
without failure, or deformation.
That is a strength few men ever gain.  I did.
And I have you to thank for it.

Mother, thanks.
Thanks for making me.
Thanks for fighting me.
Thanks for being difficult.
Thanks for making me, inside,
the strongest man I know.

-

I did not speak to anyone,
in my poetry,
for a long while after you died.
I just did not want to.

I did not love myself
for a long while after you died.
I just did not want to.

I did not see myself
as useful for a long while after you died.
I just did not want to.

Perhaps,
the time has come to change all that.
I will still have the humongous hole in my heart.
But that need not stop me from again becoming
'useful'.

-

(c) owais Creative Commons Attribution license