Sayonara, mother!

Year on year, I brushed off celebrations like Mother's day thinking why single out one day for something as boundless as a mother’s love. I was of the honest opinion that if something is truly foundational, reducing it to one commercialized day can feel inadequate or performative. But today, it feels very different. It has been a little over 2 months without her and the Mother’s Day arrives quietly for me. I am very happy that the world still moves in familiar ways — flowers wrapped in pastel paper, WhatsApp statuses with messages of gratitude; many true, some cliché. Beneath all of that celebration sits a silence I cannot escape this time. My mother is gone, and I least expected that the void her absence has created feels larger on days like this. 

She did not leave suddenly. Dementia took her slowly. That is one of the cruelest things about the disease. It does not simply end a life; it gradually alters it, piece by piece. Post the diagnosis, it created a strange kind of mourning — one where the person is physically present, yet slipping further away with every passing day. I remember the early signs we tried to dismiss. Unable to operate the TV remote. Repeated questions. Small confusions explained away as fatigue or aging. There were funny moments too: Forgotten names. The caretaker lady’s names changed to a Pan India name every time - Nalinabai Kanitkar, Noida Bhanu, Kedareshwari and many more :). Then came the moments that could no longer be ignored: the hesitation in her eyes when she looked at familiar faces, the growing uncertainty in ordinary tasks, the painful realization that memory — the invisible thread connecting a person to their world — was beginning to fray. 

And yet, even as memory faded, something essential about my mother remained. There were flashes — a smile at the sound of a familiar Dasara Pada, the episodes of Mayamurga that she recalled, moments when her eyes briefly carried the same comfort they had throughout my childhood. Those moments became precious because they were unpredictable. They reminded me that beneath the confusion and forgetfulness was still the woman who raised me, loved me, and shaped my understanding of care itself. And then, there were days where she longed to spend time with people she loved, who never visited when she could still comprehend things, and my wife and son did all that they can to subdue that. 

This Mother’s Day, what I miss most is not only her presence, but the certainty of it. I never thought I would miss my Mother so much that I’ve been realizing only of late, that she was the emotional architect of my life. She did so much with whatever little she possessed! Parents are the people we unconsciously expect to remain — the steady voice we imagine we can always call; the reassurance we assume will exist somewhere in the background of our hardest days. When that presence disappears, the world does not collapse dramatically. Instead, it changes quietly. Ordinary moments become emptier than they used to be. There are many ways grief after dementia carries its own peculiar exhaustion because the loss happens twice. First comes the gradual disappearance of the person you knew. Then comes death itself — final, undeniable, absolute. 

Dementia stole many things from her. It stole memories, independence, recognition. But it could not erase the impact of her life. It could not undo the years of her sacrifice, guidance, affection, and strength she poured into me, the people she taught at school and people around her. This is the paradox of grief: absence can become its own form of presence. 

I certainly do not miss her everywhere anymore. But, in conversations I wish I could have with her; in moments where my instinct is still to do with two cups of coffee, one for her and one for me; songs, recipes, and small habits I inherited without realizing it; when people complement my good Hindi vocab in spite of being a south Indian and even in the room freshener aroma that we used in her room during her last days; The void her death created is real, and with all the frenzy around Mother’s Day, it becomes impossible to ignore. So here I am! Writing this piece before all this memory fades away and I get busy with life...again! 

But alongside that emptiness is gratitude that I must not forget. Gratitude that I knew her before the illness. Gratitude my wife shared the burden of this journey on her shoulders too, Gratitude that my spiritual guru HH Sri Satyatma Tirtharu constantly reminded me of my responsibilities by means of his discourses; Gratitude that even dementia — relentless as it was — could not completely extinguish the humanity within her. 

Watching both parents disappear in fragments to this dreaded disease is a heartbreak difficult to describe. There is only helplessness in it. You want to protect them, to pull them back into clarity, to remind them of everything they once knew effortlessly. But here is the hard truth - Dementia does not negotiate with love. It keeps moving forward, indifferent to devotion, patience, or prayers. The journey has been of a profound learning. Immersed in memory’s ocean, I reach for the strands of wisdom my parents taught. The past hasn’t merely slipped away; it has refined me. From the depths of this reckoning, I hope this leads me to a new awakening

Sayonara, mother — With your blessings, I’m off to chase the horizon. Happy mother's day to you!