It has just been a couple of months since the New Year and I have attended two weddings and two funerals already. Since they happened one after the other, I have put them together in my mind: love and death and how the two are connected.
An uncle passed away. At his funeral and subsequent days, I witnessed an outpouring of love and from his family, relatives, people he mentored and neighbours. They spoke of him with affection and admiration. All of them said the same few things: about his uncommon kindness, curiosity about the world, his ability to treat politicians and peons with the same respect, and his love for words, travel, and food. All of which led me to wonder about the age-old question: what will your obituary say? What will people say about you after you are gone? What will they speak about at your memorial service? Which is another way of asking: who are you and what do you project to the world?
Having been in the depressing position of attending a few funerals recently, I find that career matters less than character when it comes to what people remember about you – unless you happened to have developed a game-changing business, invention, or framework. Most memorial services speak about core values that are essential to being human – about kindness, affection, warmth, a sense of humour, about being optimistic, having high integrity, about being helpful and empathetic. There are outer-focused traits however. Each of us has something unique and wacky about who we are.
The beauty of getting old is that most elders I know embrace their eccentricities. They have long given-up trying to put on their “game-face” for the outer world. They don’t try to be who they are not. Age and inability has put paid to their desire to live for others. Now they are just quirky, whacky, stubborn old folks who have individual desires and penchants – whether it is doing the crossword puzzle, or peeling a pomegranate just so. The reason visiting an elder is oddly calming is because in them you see who you are not. In them, you see a person who exudes authenticity effortlessly, not because they are trying to but because they have stopped trying to do what the world asks them to.
The question is whether you can shortcut this. Can you be authentic when in your forties, fifties and sixties instead of waiting till you are in your eighties to do this? I don’t think so, because early in life, you are enmeshed in roles and duties. You are a sibling, parent, child, spouse and colleague, all at the same time. Each role demands something different, and each situation demands a different code of behaviour. There are very few people who are in outward-facing positions who are able to follow Shakespeare’s dictum in Hamlet: “To thine own self be true.”
Easy to say, Polonius, but if I did this, my world would explode. I have to hold my tongue with kids, spouse, sibling, parents, friends and colleagues. It is called politeness and telling white lies, and both of these lubricate life.
Recently, though, I had a different sort of epiphany. Perhaps it was the funerals that I was attending. “I think I should tell my mother what she means to me,” I told my husband. “And maybe you should too, either by writing a letter or making a recording that she can play.”
“That’s not my way,” he replied. “My way is to give them small moments of joy.”
The larger question though is whether your loved ones know how much you love them. I think in today’s age, we tend to shower love and praise on our children. But have you told your parent recently about how much they mean to you? How? Certainly, my parents are not of the generation where public display of affection was common. My mother, for example, has never used the phrase, “I love you.” But I feel the strength of her love almost every day, even though she is frail at 86. It shows up in weird ways. When I tell her that I have to write an article on sarees, she will ask the next person she meets — in my presence — about sarees. “Shoba is writing about sarees. Do you have any ideas?” she will ask the housekeeper of my building as we walk together. Is this love? Is this what is called “enabling” your children? I feel so.
We have just finished Valentine’s Day. Holi is coming up. Both celebrate love, which most of us associate with the romance that we have with partners and spouses. But maybe we also need to figure out how to express our love to the folks we take for granted: our parents.
(Shoba Narayan is Bengaluru-based award-winning author. She is also a freelance contributor who writes about art, food, fashion and travel for a number of publications)