The unnerving question is, if my mother, who I lost 30 years ago, were to come back today will she recognize me? I do not think any mother would recognize her children. Puzzled?
I lost my mother to cancer in 1996. When she was 48 years old; and I was 29 years. My father said goodbye to us all in 2023. Many of you must have lost your loved ones; and this is a part of our lives. This is the way it is. Nothing can be done about it, no one can ever do a thing about it. And very soon, though I do not know how soon, we too will become the ‘loved ones’ to our progeny and future generations. I do hope, we do become the ‘loved ones!
The question is, if my mother, who I lost 30 years ago, were to come back today will she recognize me? Will she be saying “Babu! You became so thin…have you not been eating properly?” Will she smile happily at me and recognize me? Will she hug me with same love and affections that existed 30 years ago, before her death?
I know, all of you will argue: Mother! Mother is mother! How can you even conceive this stupid question? She will recognize you. We are 1000% sure”. This is Artificial Emotion (AE) and certainly Stupid Intelligence (SI).
However, while honoring your positive and imaginative sentiments truthfully, I beg to differ. I say “If my mother were to be back today, she would not be able to recognize me. Nor do I think, again with apologies I state, she would be in a position to shower the same love that existed before her departure. She would, in all probability, would look at me with and ask, ‘Who the hell are you’?
This is not only true with my or any mother but holds good with any departed loved ones. Let me give you an example to explain my mind. When I was in class 10, I was madly in love with a girl of my class named ‘Radha’. She too was in love with me. We sat on the same bench next to each together, walked to school, always, together; and during lunch time, we shared food! If she was absent to school, I too was absent. We bunked school for the movies together. We got separated due to her father’s transfer to another town. For few months we wrote letters to each other regularly, then we lost touch. I met her at a social gathering, recently and accidently. Neither of us recognized each other. When we did eventually come to know, and with great difficulty, we both were trying to find each other who we knew so well about 40 years ago! There was no love nor there was any recognition! At one time, we could have given our lives too far each other’s sake! This is with the people who are still living.
My mother, if she were to be back today, she would not be able to recognize me. I grew old, bald, fat, sick, spectacles and with all joint pains; and she remained as she was! Between us there is a huge change. An unfathomable gap! What would she say to me? Nothing. The spark of love and belongingness has gone away, mutually. We grew old remembering the departed, and they remained as they were!
The love and respect will remain for the departed for few years. As our life progresses, our loved ones will slowly become a bundle of memories; from that bundle, few more years down the line, become weak memories, new impressions and memories replace them. And few more years later, they became a meaningless photograph hanging on a cobweb ridden wall, dusted and almost forgotten. ‘Who are they in those old photographs’? asked a friend of a grandchild. ‘Oh they? They belong to my grandparents, I think’, she replied innocently.
When we are gone, their photo will be replaced with ours. I will be, in the photo, staying unchanged, staring into meaningless eternity, waiting with infinite patience for my replacement photograph to arrive.
About the Author
Dr. K. Raja Gopal Reddy is a seasoned internationally qualified Insurance professional. What you are reading here, may not answer all the questions we have, but has the absolute power of asking unsettling questions which increase the interest in the strange world, and show the contradictory wonders lying just below the surface of the commonest things of life. Look at this disturbing but beautiful thought of Friedrich Nietzsche “God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him”.
Dr. Reddy can be reached at: raja66gopal@gmail.com
