In the past two years, I came across very similar stories that perhaps had started at different times and places, but met a similar end.
Many moons ago, a distant relative about the same age as mine was married off when I was in my sophomore year of high school. She had just started her twelfth grade, and by the time she could make sense of a world beyond school, she found herself as a homemaker.
Two decades passed by, and when she fell severely ill due to a chronic thyroid imbalance, her lean persona was beyond recognition, and seeing her at the funeral of her cousin, even younger than her, there was a collective empathy to assist her.
I reached out to gather more details of her and learnt that she chose to separate herself from her husband, who has turned alcoholic and was on the streets with no care in the world for the family behind, and it’s been more than a decade since she had been separated, living all by herself with her two sons and working as an office administrator in a school.
Then one day she called and informed me her husband was found dead outside the entrance of the hospital he went to for treatment, and as he fell, he broke the main screen of the mobile, but a kind and smart guy traced the last dialled number by dialling all the numbers possible and this how was able to reach his younger brother who he spoke to before breathing his last.
I met her after the funeral, and while narrating how he died, she broke down into sobs.
She felt a deep void since morning, and a thought crossed her mind: what if she gives him another chance? She also tried calling him but then stopped herself midway. Something inside her felt restless and chaotic, so complex that she could not articulate it.
She has been a house help at my Grandmother’s house for more than a decade and additional help anytime available for assistance, especially during festivals and large gatherings at home.
Married while in her teens, she recently married her elder daughter and is now a grandmother to a lovely grandson. When I asked her why she didn’t invite her husband to the wedding of their daughter, she said he has been on the streets for several years. There was a glimmer of hope for her two years ago when he became sober for the first time in his life and had shown up at her house to start their life anew; she readily agreed to give him another chance, but like all good things, it came to an end sooner than she thought.
Today, almost a decade has passed by, and she informs me that he died last night, hitting an electric pole in an inebriated condition.
The city police had shifted the body to the government mortuary and demanded money for his unforeseen death.
No one came forward to assist or meddle with the police force
I supported her in arranging for the funeral, and before I closed the long call I was with her, I could hear her silence turned into unstoppable sobs.
Life is indeed stranger than fiction, and sometimes the closures get stranger than the life lived.
I’ve seen both these women, more or less my age, in their various seasons of life. While there is no commonality I share with them, the strangeness of grief I found them encountering looked and felt so familiar.
Their stories reminded me of my own relationship loss and the many questions that I kept asking myself as I tried to make sense of what was actually lost, and I have no answers to date!
Warmly
Mehnaz Amjad