Tag: Grief Loss and Bereavement

Food For Thought, Inpsiration

A Rough Day

Sanjay Sabarwal

Yesterday was not an easy day. It’s been over 8 months since Papa has been going, yet it still feels so raw. Mostly because I haven’t allowed myself to process my grief. It’s just easier to look at the unfairness of things, to be snippy at others at their “luck” of having dads still.

My selfishness knows no bounds when it comes to my emotions and thoughts. I buried myself in feeling sad and sorry for myself, yet it hit me as I hiked Hellman Trail yesterday that my father would have hated me this way. He was a happy-go-lucky guy who would try anything to make his loved ones smile. So not was I dishonoring his memory, I upset others with my crappy attitude.

Then a beautiful message from my wife hit me to my core, and I lived yesterday with a new sense of urgency: to not waste time and energy on things I cannot change. Then I also noticed how so many had reached out, and the most I could muster was a lame thank you. It is in times of need that I sometimes truly forget that I am never alone. I just make myself feel that way which only serves the selfish need inside me to dwell rather than take responsibility.

So each day will be a focus on less feeling sorry for myself, and then finding way to be in service to others. It’s what my father would have wanted.

Myself

Transitions

Sanjay Sabarwal

Today, my niece turned 18.  She is the second to do so.  I also have a 21-year-old niece.  There is nothing like seeing others grow up to realize that you no longer can pretend to be young.  It’s really quite amazing to see someone grow up into an adult right in front of your eyes.  It’s also a surreal week as last week I witnessed the burial of a dear friends father.  Life. Death. Growth. That’s what we are surrounded by, yet we constantly get caught up in the mundane. We do not realize how lucky we are to have the ones we have in our lives.  We ignore that we are all beautiful souls who are just here temporarily and perhaps instead of really enjoying each others presence, we let the worry of money, work and conflict drive each day.

I realize that I am being preachy so perhaps I need to switch from We to I.  This is my daily journey. Each morning, I have been waking up and really trying to spend some time with myself. It’s as if I have become a stranger to myself. So many random thoughts swirling around, and I see that a majority of them are negative.  I see that I am creating so much negative energy, and so now I try to refocus. It has led me to know how lucky I am to have met my friend’s father one last time before he passed.  To be touched by the earth in my hands as I bid him farewell on his new journey, and to be blessed to have known him and his daughter.  I also could not be more proud of my friend’s husband, a new father and a relatively new son-in-law, who took care of the family as his own. It was truly inspiring to see him be there for them.

I am surrounded by love, pain, grief, anger, but most importantly inspiration. If I could just allow myself to see life as what it really is, I would be a better person for it. It is a continuous teacher, lover, and philosopher.  So today as I wish my niece a beautiful birthday, I also wish my dear friend and her family a beautiful day in memory of their luck in having uncle in their lives. I know I feel blessed with the people in my life.

Myself

2010

Sanjay Sabarwal
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Image by gynti_46 via Flickr

You weren’t a good friend, come to think of it you weren’t much of anything except a source of constant grief.  I am not sorry to see you go, in fact I would say I am glad but I am not going to even dignify that sentiment in relation to you.  But then I realize I have something you cannot take away which are my friends, my family and best of all my brand new wife, Preeti so perhaps I can begrudge you a bit of a farewell.  Except today is just another day, and that’s how I plan to spend it.  No parties, no celebrations just a night in with my beautiful Preeti, just the 2 of us lying next to each other, savoring the closeness and the love of all the ones dear to us in memory.

You weren’t easy to deal with.  From taking a dear family member, giving me a stroke to afflicting the love of my life with a life changing disease, I can definitely say you have made it a mission to be memorable except you are not.  I am not going to give you that power.  Instead, you get this tiny post almost 2 hours before you die in my memory.  You don’t exist, and if you plan to tell your friend 2011 to do the same, then it will get the same middle finger.

I am not bitter.  I am not angry.  I am just done.  I know what I have in my life, and guess what, I know I am rich in that.  Forget money, forget fame, forget the material things or the many meaningless promises I have made at other New Year Eve’s.  I have what I need and want.  Now all that’s left is for the rest of the year to recognize that they have  been reduced to numerical symbols, meaning nothing except for the passage of time.  If you thought you were going to beat me down, 2010, you were mistaken.

Hear me out 2011, you might want to stay on your best behavior before you, too become another torn out calendar.  You have been warned.

Also, 2010, FUCK YOU.

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