Empty Chairs

June 20, 2018, Yashoda Hospital, I have witnessed the most heart-wrenching incident for the second time in a consecutive year. I was waiting out of the emergency ward and could see my mother inside the room and doctors repeatedly keeping a close vigil on ECG and saying:

Okay. Let’s try again. An Amp of atropine.

Okay. stop compression.

Still, no pulse…repeat the procedure.

Okay. Let’s try again. An Amp of atropine.

Okay. stop compression.

Still, no pulse

Okay, that’s it, everybody. I will call it.

Time of death, 10:41 am

This was the moment I lost my mother

As the year 2018 approaches to its end, I’m planning to set an extra table….

It’s not for the kids who would asleep on little forearms as the night wears on.

It’s not for the desserts. We have a separate space for those as well. Gulab Jamun, Gajar Ka Halwa, Modak and Payasam, ice creams and sorbets and brownies and biscotti and the family favorite of chocolate chip cookies and whipped topping, because every family has an original dish.

It’s not for guests coming from out of station. Generally, when all my family and friends meet we all sit together, in a circular shape, where chairs get turned to speak.

The table I’m setting this year is a new one. A different one. It’s a table for all those who are no longer coming, all those who filled the house with laughter, stories, songs and interesting discussions, and who, sadly, will never walk through the door again.

This year-end will be the first that I host without parents in my life — parents who, for decades, held this holiday in their home, making our lives more meaningful.

Now, like so many of my older relatives, my parents are gone. But I can still see them. Hear them.

               So, I’m setting a table but with empty chairs...

Then I saw my grandmother, “I call her bamma”, as warm as a furnace, very much approachable and loveable, examining the desserts and approving the quantity.

                                 

There’s my grandpa, "Prof. T.Venkat Rao" the most respected man in our family, who never shunned to take up any kind of responsibility. Alongside him is my another grandpa, Ramam Tatagaru who later became my best friend

There’s his sister, whom I call "Santoshnagar Ammamma" her voice is as sweet as she is. She’s talking with her daughter, whom I fondly call as "Seshu Pinni", over something that could possibly be important.


                                        

Next to them is my Uncle Chandu Babai, who is Seshu Pinni's husband, who supposedly has trouble with lungs, but a very engaging and high energy man.


                                      

Alongside them, holding court, is my Uncle Ramarao Mama, with the clean-shaven face and a booming voice, letting everyone know he’s not eating a particular sweet-jaggery dish because, as he is not supposed to eat excessive sweets

                           

And next to him is my mother, laughing as she always laughed at her brother, which made him smile, which made her smile, which made everyone so connected

                               

And looking on, beaming, is my father, who had been with my mother since he was in his 20’s, who took care of my mother as his daughter since she got affected with merciless Parkinson-plus syndrome, a disastrous-disease my mother witnessed when she was in her 50’s.

They are all gone now, from one thing or another. Cancers. Strokes. More heart attacks, Diabetes, Parkinson-Plus. One by one they disappeared from the year-end table, and each year we mourned the latest absentee until the absentees outnumbered the original attendees.

Which is where we are now….Empty chairs.

                                   

I still remember the day my mother celebrated one of the last new year’s wherein she prepared delicious south Indian food and we had so much fun.

I was in my early 20’s then. Too young, really, to understand the implications of gathering relatives from around the world, too young to comprehend when she said, “It’ll be up to you to hold the family together after we are gone”. Although I didn’t like that statement when she said, now it makes all the more sense to me

After all, I thought, it’s just a new year, an event shouldered by my parents for as long as I could recall, through a modest house in Hyderabad.

But as the years passed, it became apparent that with busy lives and busy careers and new spouses and new children, getting everyone together, even once a year, was a challenge.

With guidance, we undertook it. We learned the preparation, the sleeping arrangements I still recall the year when, we all used to sit together for dinner, as was tradition, and I turned to my father, the patriarch of the family, and nodded for him to stand up and give the annual greeting and gratitude for our blessings. He shook his head and motioned to G3(my beautiful wife) and me, saying, “This is your house. You should be doing it now.”

Looking back, that was the beginning of the final handoff. It ended last Feb when I lost my Dad on a Friday evening from heart blockage. For the last few years, he’d been reduced to participating through Skype/WhatsApp video calls, unable to travel, and some of our family were unable to meet due to geographic location constraints.

You can’t keep things alive. I’m learning that, painfully. No matter how much you love something or someone, their existence is out of your control. You can weep. You can wail. But you can’t summon them back.

All you can do is carry on and remember. So I pull out the furniture and move it around, if only in my mind, which is where so much of this holiday lives.

Empty chairs. Missing loved ones. God, how their voices once filled the room, as their echoes fill it now.

With Love beyond words,

Aditya Telidevara