21 grams

"Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing 
and rightdoing there is a field.
I'll meet you there.

When the soul lies down in that grass
the world is too full to talk about." ― Rumi

Seven months today. I continue to live. I continue to exist. I continue to strive for ways to make peace. With the days I live. And the death I died. Seven months back.

Read an article a few days back, where an acclaimed physician in Haverhill, Massachusetts, Dr. MacDougall claims that a human frame loses 21 grams of its total mass at the exact moment of death. Implying that 21 grams is supposed to be the weight of the human soul. Can something intangible like a soul have an accurate measure? You may think. Even I did. But then, you never know when doctors from the most advanced nations vouch for it.

So where does this cloud weighing 21 grams go once it leaves the physical frame? Hover around, fly away, become a star, or simply merge with the air we breathe? 

My search begins. 

Seven months of a life that has taught me so much about the world we live in. About the ones who really care and love, and the rest, for whom my life has turned out to be an interesting soap. Learnt amazing things about how losing a partner can give so-called well-wishers, the liberty to speak shit (sorry for my language, but I couldn’t find a word that would be more apt) about you. Learnt how to handle them alone, learnt how to turn the tables, learnt how to keep a straight face when the same well-wishers sugar-coated fake lines before me. Still learning. For I must.

And then, these seven months have shown me a mother who did almost everything to help me smile. I can see the pain in her eyes when she cooks for me, hear the love when she calls and asks whether I have taken my lunch, feel the emptiness when she hugs her granddaughter each time she says something funny. My mother, wounded, but not ready to give up yet. Because of me and Guria. My mother … the rock I am clinging on to. For the last seven months.

Often in the last few months, I would wake up at odd hours in the night wondering whether I am still alive. It would take me a minute or two to realize that yes clinically, I am still breathing and hence, alive. The following few hours I would spend trying to figure out how this is possible. How is it that after such brutal stabs on my frail bosom, my heart still works? How is it that in spite of all my anger, I am still in place? And then my eyes fall on the one sleeping beside me … the prettiest angel sleeping with hands folded, calm, serene, personifying bliss. And I understand how?

These months stand witness to my search for places to hide during the daytime when most around me were expecting me to get back to normal. Sometimes I even pretended I have reached the acceptance stage of grief, and actually tried to make myself believe so as well. But as night came, I was again a floating log after the wreck, a shadow of the one I was. As night came, all my pretences removed, I felt lighter. Sitting with myself, I could now cry. Till the sun rose again.

Yes, seven months of a life that is both liberating and enslaving. For not only has it brought me closer to the package that comes with the death of a young husband, but also, to the parcel that comes with the life you have been granted to live, from the moment you see him for the very last time.

‘Last time’… that’s the part that brings me back to the deathless 21 grams of the soul. If all subtle consciousness of life, gets concentrated in these transcendent 21 grams before a person dies, then I am sure he is around. And watching. 21 grams of a life not lived fully, of a life cut short by cancer, of a life that was integral for my family to be complete. Now that he is above all basic human emotions, does he know that I have not yet been able to accept that he is not coming back? Does he understand what life has become for us? How we spend our weekends in malls with laughters camouflaging tears? Do those 21 grams of abstract energy allow him to feel and more importantly, do they connect him to what I feel? Or to his child? Do those 21 grams see me while I sleep, or talk about him, or simply stare at nothing?

21 grams. The measure of my husband’s soul. Looming somewhere, but not visible. 21 grams of hope that he might still be there, somewhere. But definitely not too far away from us. 21 grams of higher emotions that will, at some point of eternity, help him know what he means to me. 21 grams of a faith that he shall patiently wait for me till my time comes. 21 grams of blessings for the little angel he has left behind.

I complete seven months today. Of heart-breaking truths. Like I am a single parent. Like Guria’s father is no more. Like penning a ‘late’ before his name. Like sorting things up with photocopies of the official document stating his absence. In human form. Numbing truths that started unfolding seven months back, with a flat, unforgiving ECG, well past midnight.

Truths that will fail to hurt me one day … when I find those lost 21 grams. Of my life.  

Thank you for being with me in my journey.

May peace be with you. For that is all you need.