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As she fumbled with the fabric, Suman’s mind wandered back to the day everything had changed. It had been sudden—her mother’s illness had crept in like a thief in the night, stealing her vitality before anyone could fully comprehend what was happening. A month of hospital visits, treatments, and the inevitable conversation with the doctors had left the family reeling. Suman had been in the middle of her final year of university, hundreds of miles away, when her father called to tell her that her mother was gone.
Guilt had weighed heavily on her since that day—guilt for not being there, for not appreciating her mother enough, for not knowing how to help her father and brother through their grief. She had thrown herself into her studies, into anything that could distract her from the emptiness that had settled in her chest. But now, as she stood in her mother’s room, she couldn’t escape the reality any longer. Her mother was gone, and Suman was left to figure out how to fill the void she had left behind.
Suman looked at herself in the mirror again, her reflection blurry through the tears she hadn’t realized were falling. The woman looking back at her seemed older, wiser in a way that didn’t come from experience but from loss. She wiped her eyes and took a deep breath, letting the weight of the saree settle around her like a mantle of responsibility.
The door creaked open, and Suman turned to see her younger brother, Rahul, standing in the doorway. He was taller than she remembered, his shoulders broader. Grief had changed him too, though he rarely spoke about their mother. He had retreated into his own world since her death, spending more time with his friends and less time at home.
“Are you… wearing mom’s saree?” Rahul asked, his voice soft, unsure.
Suman nodded, unsure how to explain why she had put it on in the first place. “I don’t know… it just felt like the right thing to do,” she said, her voice shaky. “I miss her.”
Rahul stepped into the room, his eyes lingering on the saree. “I miss her too,” he said quietly. He sat down on the edge of the bed, staring at the floor. “Sometimes, I think about all the things I never got to say to her. I didn’t even thank her for everything she did for us.”
Suman sat down beside him, the saree rustling softly as she moved. “I feel the same way. There’s so much I didn’t understand about her until now. It’s like, now that she’s gone, I’m finally starting to see her as a person, not just… mom.”
Rahul nodded, his eyes still focused on the floor. “Do you think she was happy? I mean, really happy?”
The question hung in the air between them, heavy and loaded with the weight of their mother’s sacrifices. Suman thought about it for a moment, trying to piece together the puzzle of her mother’s life. “I think she found happiness in ways we didn’t always see,” she said slowly. “She loved us, and she loved taking care of us. But… maybe there were things she wanted that she never got to do.”
Rahul looked up at her, his eyes filled with a sadness that mirrored her own. “I wish we could have known her better. Really known her.”
The two siblings sat in silence for a while, the quiet of the house pressing in on them. Suman’s mind was racing with thoughts of her mother, of the life she had lived, the dreams she might have had. She had always seen her mother through the lens of her own rebellion—had always assumed that her mother’s life was small, confined by tradition and family expectations. But now, she wasn’t so sure. Maybe her mother had found a different kind of freedom, one that Suman was only beginning to understand.
Suman stood up and walked over to the dresser, picking up a small photo frame. It was a picture of her mother, smiling brightly at the camera, her eyes crinkled with laughter. Suman had never noticed how young her mother looked in that photo, how alive she seemed. She wondered what her mother had been thinking when that picture was taken, what dreams she had held in her heart.
She turned back to Rahul, holding the frame in her hands. “I think she was happy, in her own way. But maybe we can honor her by living the life she didn’t get to—by chasing our dreams, but also by appreciating the simple things that she loved.”
Rahul nodded slowly, a small smile tugging at the corners of his mouth. “Yeah. I think she’d like that.”
Later that evening, as Suman helped her father with dinner, she found herself slipping into the rhythm of her mother’s routines—cutting the vegetables the way her mother had taught her, stirring the dal with the same care. Her father watched her quietly, his face etched with lines of grief and weariness. He hadn’t spoken much since Aarti’s death, but tonight, as they sat down to eat, he broke the silence.
“You look like her, you know,” he said, his voice rough with emotion. “Wearing that saree… for a moment, I thought…”
Suman looked at him, her heart aching at the vulnerability in his voice. “I miss her, Dad,” she said softly. “But I’m trying to understand her more now. I think… I think we all are.”
Her father nodded, his eyes glistening with unshed tears. “She was the heart of this family,” he said quietly. “But now, we have to learn how to carry on without her.”
Suman reached across the table, taking her father’s hand in hers. “We will. We’ll figure it out, together.”
In that moment, Suman realized that stepping into her mother’s shoes didn’t mean becoming her mother. It meant honoring her legacy, carrying forward the love and strength that Aarti had poured into their lives, and finding her own path forward.
As she looked around the table at her family, Suman felt a quiet sense of resolve settle over her. They would carry on, just as her mother had always taught them. And in doing so, they would keep her memory alive, not just in the saree she wore, but in the love and resilience they have .
RAJAT CHANDRA SARMAH
GUWAHATI , ASSAM , INDIA
19/10/2024
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