‘I lost two sons in one year. What can be more devastating?’

By Abhishek Sharma

January now feels like a season of silence for 80-year-old Mrs. Kanti Sharma, a mother of five. The month that once meant family picnics, kites in the sky, and bowls of warm halwa in the sun, now arrives like an unwelcome reminder. For the past one year, it’s been a relentless trial of loss; beginning with her eldest son, Durgesh Kaushik, and closing with the sudden demise of her youngest son-in-law, Pramod Kumar Sharma.

“Maine ek hi saal mein apne do bete khoye hain. (I lost two sons within a single year.) What could be more devastating than that?” she says in a trembling voice.

Durgesh, fondly called Neetu by his family, was a civil engineer — a devout, jovial man who never began his day without touching his parents’ feet after returning from the temple. He passed away unexpectedly after a brief two-day hospitalisation due to liver cirrhosis and medical negligence.

Just a year later, in the exact same month of January, fate dealt another cruel blow — her daughter’s husband, Pramod, who had battled a chronic lung disease for years, took his final breath. “I still remember his teasing voice calling out from the living room,” she smiles faintly. “He used to joke, ‘Are Mummyji ko kuch bhi mat dena Neelam, ye toh chaar din ka khake aayi hongi.” (Hey Neelam, don’t give anything to Mummyji she must have eaten four days’ food and then come to our house.)

Mrs. Sharma doesn’t count time in months anymore. She counts it in memories.

There are days when she hears a bike approaching the gate and for a flicker of a second, she believes her son is back from the site. She imagines him lighting the angeethi (coal stove) on a cold night, spreading out moongfali (groundnuts) and revdis on a steel plate, insisting everyone sit together in the verandah. From telling his wife, Rajni Sharma, to cook interesting delicacies, to bringing all the gulaal, gujiyas, firecrackers, rangoli colours for everyone, he really used to love spending on his family.

The grief didn’t stop there. One by one, death knocked again on other doors within the same home. Her second and third daughters lost their mothers-in-law. Her youngest daughter-in-law lost her father, whose mother already passed away in 2011 due to paralysis.

“It’s painful to see everyone go,” she says. “Especially those younger than me, or equal to me, is so painful. Life is really very unpredictable. It reverses on you in old age suddenly; you are the one left behind to mourn,” she added melancholy.

“People come and sympathise,” she admits, “but only the one who has suffered knows what that pain feels like.” Her grief is not loud — it sits beside her quietly during festivals, whispers through the silence of family get-togethers, and wraps around her on nights when no one is watching.

Prayer and spirituality have become her only anchor now. She talks to God daily, asking Him to give peace to their souls and strength to her heart. “Watching religious sermons on TV during the day calms me. I believe they are watching over me. That belief gives me courage,” she says, holding her rosary.

“I tell my grandchildren about them. I want them to know what kind of people they were -generous, loving, full of life,” she says. “That’s how their memory will live on; not in silence, but in stories.”

Her voice quivers at the thought of what she’d say if given just one more moment with each of them. “To Neetu, I’d say — I miss you every moment, mere bete. You were my strength, and life feels empty without your voice.” “And to Pramod — you were like my own son. I wish God had given you more time, and me more chances to say thank you.”

She encouraged the fact that you must tell your children how much you love them. Sit, chat and laugh with them because you never know, which moment could be your last one with them.

(The writer is a first-year student of media at KCC Institutes in Greater Noida.)

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