26. Sometimes I wish I could lose my memory

I love my wife. My wife is dead. I think about her all the time. 

I wish I had written letters to her before like the time we used to write to each other when we were young. But I am always too slow. I always made her miserable by not understanding soon enough. I understand now. So, I’m writing a letter today on her birthday.

The Earth

August 26, 2025

My darling wife, 

I’ve never wanted to parade my grief in public but how could I not – I don’t know your new address where to post this letter, so forgive me. 

It has been 252 days and two hours since you took your last breath but I haven’t been able to convince myself of the fact that you aren’t here anymore.

I grapple with the reality that thirty-eight years together had come to an abrupt end. 

I find it hard to understand in my mind what it means to love you after you are dead. And I thought there was no sense to writing but I wanted to tell you I love you. I always will love you.

I wish I had done a lot more for you. Only if I knew before that our days together were counted. I would have told you how much I loved you a million times more. 

When we started our journey together, I was with a lot of dumb bravado but you accepted me with all my madness. I thought of myself as a strong and capable man but now I realize that the strength came from you and I was just lucky to have been married to a strong woman. 

You were always full of new ideas and the best catalyst for all our unorthodox adventures. You gave me a better life. I know it was hard because you were elegantly self-disciplined and self-regulating; a kind woman, more than my equal. You made me a better man. Your life revolved around me and the kids.

Now every time I enter our home, I wish you’ll open the door and let me see your heavy-lidded eyes, pouty lipsticked mouth and plucked and penciled eyebrows.

And when I’m inside I wish you will walk in through that door any minute.

Hope and fear go hand in hand.

We were destined to live in many cities but we could easily grow roots anywhere. There are the few places where we couldn’t transform reality to our liking so we transformed ourselves. It was because we wanted to attract the small happiness which is a part of every city.

We wanted to be joyful, but happiness eluded us in the conventional sense, most of our lives. What we could do? Happiness is not bulletproof.

Still, we were never unhappy in our tiny little world. In our own way we caught hold of the small happiness and the credit goes to you because you were capable to tear every problem and scatter the bits outside the window. I know you always wanted me to have full happiness and to be happy all we needed was each other. 

A small purchase and having the cheapest ice cream made our day. Once upon a time it was such a day you started calling me king. Yes, once upon a time!

Suppressing the urge to laugh wasn't easy, when you spoke because you often spoke with many adjectives – the laughs we shared that reverberated off the walls and filled up the room. 

Now when I laugh the sound runs out of the window like summer lightening.

Till your last day we both thought things would return to the way they once were but …. now I get so lonely I can’t relate to anyone. I am alone without you.

I call for you in the night. Some days I try to think of you as much as I can so that you come visit me in my slumber. I never want the dream to end although I wake up with a weight on my chest. 

Today is your birthday. While we cut your favourite Black Forest Cake, we wish you were here. The night is quite wonderful and the moon is bright. The whole sky is just blazing and the clouds are rioting. 

Believe me, it’s raining the way you liked. The sound of downpours, and the feeling of the cool breeze.

It was I who lit your pyre and I know you are nowhere that I could embrace you. I know I planted the last long kiss on your forehead and told you I’d see you again. 

Still, I just want to sit in the stillness next to you again. I remember some of our best moments were where nothing was said. 

Sometimes I wish I could lose my memory.

You have heard it countless times but I will repeat it once more - when my grandmother died, I wanted to send a letter to her. I wasn’t a child; I must have been 7-8 years old. I refused to eat anything till the letter I had written wasn’t mailed.

My desperate mother took the letter in her hand, smiled and held my fingers. She took me outside the front door under the clear blue sky and threw the letter above. 

Listening to her consoling voice I couldn’t watch where the letter had fallen.

She said, “when you look up into the night sky and see the moon smile you should know she got your letter."

She continued: “why you forget, I told you the day she left that every time someone reaches heaven, the stars twinkle.” 

She was right. I could recollect; I had never seen before the stars twinkle as brightly as they were the day my grandmother died. Just like the moon was smiling that night.

I know you’ll never receive this letter but still today as the moon is smiling, so may be, may be….

I’ll close this letter with Ernest Hemingway’s sentence in ‘A Farewell to Arms’, “why darling, I don’t live at all when I’m not with you.”

Yours only

(Top Photo is from a series "FACES" which I painted sometime back)