“Grieving doesn’t make you imperfect. It makes you human.” ― Sarah Dessen
Lynda was going through awful restless nights as Adam was keeping her totally awake every night. He always wanted his bottle and never learned how to close his eyes during the night until he was one year old. I felt as helpless as I was consumed with my both jobs and never seemed to find any time to help Lynda out. She still wanted me to rest when I used to get back in the middle of the night, knowing that I had to go to work at the store in the morning. In order to avoid disruption, she started sleeping in the baby’s bedroom to make her readily available to Adam. I remembered mom came to stay with us with the idea to help Lynda but on the first night, in the middle of the night, she pushed the pram back into our bedroom and said here’s your son, guys.
In the midst, I felt guilty to tell Lynda that my mom wanted me to visit home. I left India in 1967, since then there were so many deaths in our family and like anybody else, my mom was also getting older by the minute. I used to talk to my mom on the phone a couple of times in a month and she always used to tell me that she’s not going to be around too long. The main reason of my hesitation for mentioning to Lynda about India was that I was expected to spend at least a month in India and I was aware of the fact that it’s too long. I couldn’t possibly leave Lynda with three kids for a month with no help around.
Nevertheless, I found a few minutes in the middle of the night to mention to Lynda that I need to go to India at least for four weeks and I was totally surprised that she didn’t get upset and she said you been away for seven years and your mother has a right to see you.
Lynda bought all kind of things for my mom, brothers, and sisters. Those days there were no restrictions to take more than one suitcase.
I took off for four weeks in the month of April 1974 when Adam was only two months old. Mom came to stay with Lynda while I was gone. While she was a kind of extra work for Lynda but she enjoyed having mom around.
Travelling to India was a tedious journey in 1974. I had to go to London and take another flight to Bombay. Change the airport and wait 5 hours for the local flight to Hyderabad. The time I got to Hyderabad, I was tired partly because of the time difference and partly because of the fact that I made a mistake and travelled on Air India from London to Bombay which wasn’t a comfortable ride. There were several people at the airport that came to see me and wanted to chat with me. I pretended to be cheerful. Finally, when we got home, the first thing I wanted to do to take a nap. Needless to say that I was already missing my family back in Canada.
I should have stayed away from eating Indian food but it’s customary to go around and visit friends and relatives and eat at their places when you go back. In my case, I got sick and stayed in bed for several days.
I tried to spend time with my mom as much as possible but everybody and his brother wanted to come and see me. I wished there was a way to take her somewhere but she thought that would be entirely rude and discourteous. I did manage to see some of my old friends I used to work with. In essence those were very long and depressing four weeks that I spent in India.
When I got back home, I was really tired but very pleased to see my family.
