EWS = Essay 4 = A son....

There is a small story attached with this essay. Our teacher took the essays and blacked out all our names from it. She chose people randomly to read aloud whatever essay she gave and the rest of the class that listened to it had to guess the writer. It was a lot of fun! My essay was given to a guy, M. Now he has a mellow way of talking  and it was a coincidence that our teacher gave my essay to a boy. When he spoke the first line,"Aliya and I have been married for more than fifty years" we all burst out laughing. He blushed! After that he tried again but we all couldn't stop laughing and he gave the essay back and even the teacher thought it best that a boy not read it. To get us serious again, we guessed all the essays until this essay was the only one left, so it was obvious that the last essay was my essay. So a girl read it, and once she did start reading, there was silence.   

“A son is a son before he gets a wife. A daughter is a daughter all her life.”

Aliya and I have been married for more than fifty years. That’s quite a record, considering the divorce rate these days. I had seen her for the first time at a funeral. Yes, finding love at a funeral seems like a bad omen, but I couldn’t take my eyes off of her the moment I laid my eyes on her. I had nudged my sister, to show her my future wife. I did not even know whether she was already spoken for and I didn’t care. My elbow felt nothing where my sister should have been sitting. I averted my face from Aliya and looked for my sister and then it hit me like a ton a bricks. I was at my sister’s funeral.

My poor brother, I felt such sorrow when he had looked away from Aliya and realized that I wasn’t there. His face had crumbled for a split second and then he had gone back to an unreadable expression. He was devastated that I was dead. He couldn’t believe that his twin sister is not glued to his side, playing video games or getting hit by a football over and over again, just for fun. He bowed his head slightly and didn’t dare look at Aliya for the rest of the day. I know what it’s like to feel that way, falling in love. I was also falling in love when I died. It came too late. Love came when I was in the hospital, getting treated for leukemia. Hussain was so nice to me; we talked and tried to laugh while needle after needle was pricked through my skin. He finally blurted out that he loved me just before the good news that my turn for a bone marrow transplant was possible as the doctors had found a match. And then I just died. Poor Hussain. I could see him sitting with his father, one of my many uncles at the other side of the room.

However, it was not because of Hussain that I stayed around for a while. I stayed to make sure my family moved on. That they continued on from this horrible stage in their lives. I was dead now. They couldn’t do anything about it. My parents seemed to be drowning in their tears. What is wrong with them? They shouldn’t be like this. How do I convey to them that their daughter is fine? It is a tricky thing, this dead business, once you’re dead, you can never ever go back. So I made myself comfortable, hoping that my family let go of their grief over me, so that I could move on as well.

A few weeks passed, the number of guests diminished gradually until the days came when my family had no reason not to continue their normal routine in their lives. This was difficult in itself. My parents relied on my brother’s strength to live as normally as possible and I could see the superhuman strength my brother exerted not to cry. He was eighteen going on thirty. My mother took the longest to get over my absence and heavily relied on my brother. He woke Mum up before going to school, he would come back and sit with her for an hour or so every day, just talking about me or updating her on the outside world. He would get her small gifts now and then, and made sure she had her antidepressants. My brother’s support helped Mum immensely and she got better as time passed.

A few years passed and my family was almost back to normal. They smiled and laughed a lot more, especially when my brother broached the subject of marriage. He actually blushed! My father patted him on the shoulder and asked that if he had any girl in his mind. My brother immediately told them about Aliya. I clapped with glee. My parents made arrangements for a formal meeting with Aliya’s parents, even though they were related, but it was tradition to make an official request for matrimonial purposes. I waited a bit longer; I wanted to know just a bit more. As I had already known, because my brother would be the greatest life partner, Aliya agreed. Mum’s tears did not stop that day; they were of joy, for my brother.

I fast forwarded to the life after my brother’s marriage. I swore to myself that I will leave after a glimpse of their happiness. I naturally assumed that there was nothing to worry about. I guess I shouldn’t have jumped to conclusions. I saw my brother deliriously happy with his new bride. My mother though was breaking down to weep more often than before. She wouldn’t show it in front of others, but her depression got worse and worse. What I couldn’t understand was that why was she still so upset. She had a very sweet daughter-in-law, now she wouldn’t feel my absence. Something was amiss.

I fast forwarded again to events that would tell me what was still causing Mum so much pain and then I saw it. She was in the tiny store room, which was squeezed between the kitchen and my brother’s room. She sat squished up in a corner of the room, and looked through a box called “Baby”. She took out what seemed like certificates. I scrutinized the certificates and realized that they were the ones I had collected since childhood. From spelling bee contests to swimming meets. Then she took out these beautiful pieces of clothes, laces and embroideries. The colors were so vibrant and uniquely combined that one could not help but notice the care and effort gone into choosing each piece. A lump formed in my throat and my stomach sank. These pieces were meant to be my wedding clothes. I was shaking when Mum took out the graduation gown and remembered how proud my parents had been of me for finishing high school.

I couldn’t bear this pain Mum was inflicting on herself. I rushed to Aliya and tried to communicate that she should go out to the store room. Aliya sensed that something was not right and went out to investigate. She saw my mother and gently put all the things back into the box and took Mum to her room and brought in a cup of tea and biscuits later.

Aliya was such a nice and attentive daughter-in-law, but I finally realized what was wrong. She was not me; she was not Mum’s daughter for whom she had dreamt dreams since she had conceived. I felt like my heart would break. In this dilemma, I remembered a principle told time and again by an eccentric aunt. A son is a son before he gets a wife; a daughter is a daughter all her life. Suddenly I felt a hand on my shoulder. My guardian angel had finally come to take me to the beyond. I pleaded to let me stay there forever, but he just shook his head, it doesn’t work that way. So after one last look at my family, I left.