Expressing happiness… ?
Dr. Subhra D.B
As a small cheerful child, a beaming school girl, a studious collegeer and further as an optimistic adult, I remember my mother always telling me that my face was the mirror to my heart. Whatever happens outside, she could make out just by seeing my face, I guess most mothers do. I myself am a mother, though never told the same line to my daughter, know the same cannot be untrue. In fact she went on to say anyone down the road can understand what is happening inside my heart, my feelings, my emotions just by looking at me! Happy or sad or disturbed or angry! People generally perceived me as a happy person spreading warmth, joy and laughter.
Post pandemic, most of us survived barring my mother and mother in law, who succumbed one by one in the two years of the pandemic. As my father was the only senior person in his early eighties living in my family, I brought him to my place 1200 kms away from where he lived. There I was at the peak of my happiness that I was living my dream of finally helping my aged parent when he needed me the most. We talked, mostly he shared his early life stories, his change of jobs, my mom’s personality that he liked the most, movies, songs and poetry too. Even though I lost my mother few months ago, my father shared 50 years of married life with her, both of us have found calm, accepted and thus shared our past decades in a very easy breezy manner. Lunch and dinner times were full of conversations and I got to know my dad a lot more than I ever did! My husband joined for sports discussions with him and we had genuinely good time.. just the three of us. I felt nothing better can be than this feeling, that my long long cherished dream as a teenager has finally come true! I started sharing this joy and happiness with my friends and anyone who couldn’t read my face. Though I had few more occasions of ecstasy in life, I haven’t ever expressed my happiness verbally, four decades of living on planet earth.. till then.
Four months into this, what followed was a cascade of traumatic events…my father got affected with seasonal affective depression with the chilling months to pass by, that mom actually isn’t around him struck hard, he stopped talking, diagnosed with super high thyroid levels, medication followed, he would be literally mum without any interaction or conversation, had a fatal fall, got bedridden for a month and half before he bid his final goodbye. All the eight months that just passed by was faster than motion picture. I slipped into mild depression for few months till my daughter came home for the Christmas holidays.
As the new year dawned, I recovered slowly only to question my action can we express our happiness!