Love, loss and some treasured grains of happiness

The phrase ‘loss’ is clumsy. Sufficient for weight, investments and garments that don’t come again from the dhobi. It doesn’t convey the decaying of hope, of holes that emerge inside your thoughts, like you aren’t an individual anymore however a cross-stitch canvas, needles going out and in, adhering to a sample you can’t foresee, can not comprehend.

In the previous few months, {the catalogue} of losses has expanded…the previous, the anticipated, and the very younger. Some rail in opposition to God, others search the consolation of imagining a number of lives. I search for solace in phrases saved in a folder.

As a baby, my diary had a bodily type, it was a black felt journal with an orange ribbon and crammed with sketches and poems — some classics, blended with my very own. Finally got here the realisation that although I’m pretty competent as a author, I’m a horrible poet. I used to be higher off preserving verses from minds that slid alongside the iambic pentameter with the convenience of Chaplin slipping on a banana peel.

The journal modified in measurement and altered in type, turning right into a folder on my laptop computer. In bland Arial, it has misplaced a few of its enchantment, in comparison with its earlier iterations, with pencil scrawls, espresso stains, crumbs of banana chips and clover leaves dried between its pages.

Among the many earliest entries, there was a verse that I may climb inside, pull over me, a blanket in opposition to all of the bleakness.

‘So few grains of happiness measured in opposition to all of the darkish and nonetheless the scales steadiness.’

Jane Hirshfied wrote these phrases, twenty years earlier than I used to be born, in The Weighing. How are these grains fashioned I questioned, jotting down what got here to me, much less at my desk and extra after I was strolling my canine or pottering about with dudhi creepers.

Happiness will not be a pursuit, it’s an accident.

An existential paradox. To really feel pleasure, it’s essential to neglect your self. Depart the neurotic, questioning thoughts behind. Liquids poured down throats and powders inhaled are deliberate pursuits that usually open gateways to the deepest sorrow. Actual pleasure is unintended. It’s the abdomen rumbling laughter at a good friend’s passing joke, the sort the place you cross your legs so that you don’t pee on your self. It’s being absorbed within the motion of your arms, portray, knitting, cooking or within the rhythm of your legs on lengthy rambling walks with out goal. It’s each the sensation of a waterfall thundering by your chest, and the delicate buzzing inside your coronary heart. Happiness solely collides in opposition to you when you’re wanting the opposite approach.

Honour the stamps of time

Age is a mathematical drawback. There are numbers that should be tackled. It isn’t a division sum although, the place we’re lowered to a fraction of what we as soon as had been. It’s a multiplier.

At 40, you might be nonetheless the pigtailed woman who as soon as climbed timber and beat up all of the boys. The younger girl with a disdain for conference. The brand new mom with leaky breasts and fierce ambition. You don’t have one heartbreak, one breakdown, one real love, one success; you might have a mountain of them.

But we take a look at our crinkled eyes, creaking knees, the loosening of pores and skin because it detaches from muscle mass with despair. As a substitute, we must always maybe be taught to honour our traces and folds, our aches and pains. The equal of a basic’s medals, pinned to our pores and skin, a reminder of all of the battles we’ve survived, and those we’ve gained.

Love in dollops and never in dribs

Evolution has programmed us to be afraid — of the darkish, strangers, adjustments and even love. We open doorways to our hearts as a result of we’re compelled. However not fully. We maintain it ajar. Unable to step out. Letting the sunshine dapple on our arm and the facet of our cheek, whereas we stand within the shadowy doorway. Hinges crusted with previous scabs, the door wants a agency push. We wait. The solar units with out us revelling in its mild. Push the door, ignore the screeching hinges, love with all of your coronary heart, love generously, fearlessly, in dollops and never dribs.

Settle for that insufficient phrase, loss
“What’s misplaced as a result of it’s most treasured
what’s most treasured as a result of it’s misplaced.”
— Amiri Baraka

In the dead of night, at bedtime, the fragility of life underlined additional in the previous few days, I ask my daughter, ‘Promise me you’ll develop up, have youngsters and grandchildren.’

‘Yuck!’ is the swift reply.

The notion of copy, preposterous in her head.

I make one other try, ‘All proper, simply promise me that you’ll dwell longer than me.’

With the peculiar honesty of a nine-year-old, she says, ‘I can’t promise that Mama, however I’ll attempt.’

I need to settle for that it’s sufficient. Our fleeting time collectively, grains of happiness outweighing the darkness. It’s the motive we lay wreaths of soppy lilies and aromatic tuberose garlands over our lifeless. A reminder, that the fantastic thing about flowers will not be diminished by their impermanence.

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