GRIEF AND OTHER GORGEOUS THINGS

1. The Mother Tree

And this is where the end began.

Maa, I wish I could speak with you, but now all that I can do is speak to you, knowing well, you won't speak back―because there are places from where one cannot speak, and if they do, the one's left behind cannot hear.

I am standing at a place where my memory starts―where, as a three-year-old, I, for the first time, witnessed what it is to lose a mother.

You recall this tree, Maa?

I remember you holding the sparrow in the cup of your palms, gently blowing into it with your eyes closed, trying to breathe life into her so the little birds in the nest won't miss the mother. "Wake up! Wake up!" you whispered as your eyes trickled. But you knew, didn't you? You knew some things, especially the dead, don't return. They can't feel the loss the one's left behind feel.

I think now of the little birds in the nest, barely a day old, mute, nibbling at their skins in hunger. And you stared at the mother sparrow long after it was dead, with eyes frozen in time, your body gradually curling, your cheek trembling with sorrow that was not yours. Did you think of your mother that day? Of how you felt when she walked away in your sleep while you were dreaming of waking up next to her like every four-year-old?

It's strange: in that one moment of death, you held your lost mother in your palms, and I watched myself in the nest, alone, scared, so scared, imagining the grotesque fear of losing my mother-of losing you.

I am waiting for you under the same tree. It's bigger now, as all things grow when left alone―even me. It carries many nests, some with family, some without. To think of it, just how many burdens must this tree carry? Just how many times should it shed its leaf-skin, when nature strips her of all things green, when the lives she nests abandon her for a better tree, when the gale and snow-storms prick her, or the simmering summer thirsts her, or lightning threatens her with silver bolts. But she never moves. Like you, she remains grounded; somehow, like magic, she becomes whole again. Is it magic, Maa? Or does the tree know it is a mother and must outgrow her own end and flourish, so her family returns to a happy home? It must be that.

How gorgeous, how sad, how beautifully wholesome it must be, to be someone who only gives.

Today, sitting here, where you once stood, this tree shelters me in its shadow. Like you did. And your words circle me like the rustle of this tree: "Trees never die. They leave parts of them scattered around the globe as seeds and dry leaves," you told me.

But my tree died, Ma. You left. This seed needs her mother. I am not dry yet, not enough to drift away. Your memories are fresh-green-alive.

Where did you go, Maa?

***