My Experiences in Meeting Grief

6 30 am – On the morning of the 21^st September 2018, I had a quiet chat with my mother about her health and left for office after checking she was ok. Just the previous evening, our cardiologist, had examined her and cleared her of any noteworthy tribulation.

8 30 am – I have an hour-long meeting with a close colleague which is interrupted by his personal story of his father passing away two years ago. Coincidentally, the cause of his passing was the same ailment my mother was recently identified to be suffering from – Atrial fibrillation.

9 45 am – I get a call from my father informing that my mother is having trouble breathing and my return home would be “helpful, if possible”. This was the first such call summoning me back home in my 14-year working career.

10 15 am – As I navigate the traffic infested twenty-two km stretch from my office back home, I get an SoS call stating she is really sick. My requests to get an ambulance was declined as she, in her failing state, wanted me to driver her to the hospital.

11 10 am – I reach home to find my mother losing consciousness; I carry her the 100 feet distance to put her in the back seat of the car. She dies in the car on the way to the hospital, in my very sight, of a heart related condition.

In the immediate aftermath of this tragedy, I struggled without consolation and quickly realized that I was on a torturous descent. I seemed literally the model for JD Salinger’s famous quote from The Catcher in the Rye, “The man falling isn’t permitted to feel or hear himself hit bottom. He just keeps falling and falling”. What applied a brake to this fall was an existential question that my father kept asking me as he saw my excruciating state – “Would she be all right seeing you in this state if she were alive?”. Thru the course of these three months, I’ve asked myself this question over and over. And each time, the effects have been remarkable, and this reflects the strong legacy my mother has left.

The next strangulating emotion was that of unmitigated guilt. Those who are acquainted with me understand that the wellness of my parents was my most important responsibility and towards which, I couldn’t make almost any compromise. Over the years, I assembled, what I thought was the best team of doctors to oversee the care of my parents and also ensured my highest level of engagement in this matter; this despite them never being seriously ill (between my mother and father, they have been admitted to a hospital thrice in the past 30 years). In the past five years, we successfully tided over a six-month battle against Myasthenia Gravis, Dengue, Retinopathy, Prostate surgery, 2 minor Heart Attacks – each of these events had given me terrific confidence in proactively avoiding a situation and managing a crisis if it came to that. Hence this sudden event, engulfed me in a shroud of guilt – Could I have been more attentive to her symptoms? Should I have taken addl. opinions? Should I have forced her to get admitted earlier (she steadfastly refused surgery and hospital admission)?

My first serious attempt at seeking counselling was to help me face this guilt. I approached a friend, Dr. LN Deshikar, who used to run the Intensive Care Unit at St. John’s hospital, Bangalore. After spending few hours with me, studying the case and all available data, he concluded that I had done “more than what anyone could have done and in some ways taken on the mantle of the family doctor”. This affirmation went an enormous way in ridding me of the pervasive guilt.

The first six weeks post the occurrence of this catastrophe was a period of incredible hardship & stress. To use literary parlance, it was akin to life in a Kafkaesque world – where the very foundations that my being stood on seemed unsteady; where my worst fears seemed perilously close to materialization; where my physical and mental capabilities seemed manifestly degrading; where my self-worth was plummeting.

While I safely look back at this period, I relate closely to the perspective of Aldous Huxley from his seminal work, The Doors of Perception. Huxley wrote “each person is at each moment capable of remembering all that has ever happened to him and perceiving everything that is happening everywhere in the universe. The function of the brain is to protect us from being overwhelmed and confused by irrelevant knowledge, by shutting out most of what we should otherwise perceive or remember at any moment and leaving only that very small and special selection which is likely to be practically useful. According to such a theory, each one of us is potentially a Mind at Large”. My personal experience with grief in its immediacy was that the firewalls protecting my brain had been compromised, enabling a sort of my own Mind to be at Large – one that promoted irrational correlation, nightmarish manifestation of fears, amplified noise and feelings of despair. Thru the course of the first month, with consistent focus and support from my ecosystem, I was able to sub consciously re-establish these firewalls required to get back to normal.

As the first weeks passed, my inner self almost consistently demanded proof that my own life was worth living. To help me overcome this conundrum and in general support my recovery, my first point of calling was my mentor of two decades, Rev. Fr. Thomas C Mathew. While being in his own state of physical suffering, he lent me the most practical advice and implored that I open myself to other more aesthetic dimensions of human existence (e.g. larger societal contributions, duties toward existing relationships) and to appreciate the beauty of life as well as regeneration. Being able to peer outside this current situation, I realized that human destiny unfolds, not in customary linear time, but in cycles of significant events. His sharing of his own experiences with bereavement helped reset my thought to a point where I understood such proof is not only impossible to conjure but also unnecessary. These series of conversations helped me appreciate this aesthetic dimension and how this has the key to opening the door for the affirmation of life, our love of it – and in his words, toward faith and rejuvenation. In my journey of recovery, this was a most important step.

In the immediate month after her tragic passing, I look back that my near failing state was centered around two realities – a) skewing of hopes and ideals that are not congruent to neither my normal self nor to ordinary reality b) and at times, having no hopes at all. This deadly combination of the collapsing self and undeniable pessimism put me in sort of dark cell reminiscent of what I saw in the film, Papillon. But there was no sudden ray of sunshine that eliminated these feelings. As a tall and most understanding leader up my reporting line advised me early on – “time is the only healer” (and he’s been most helpful). My own experience to further fortify this guidance is to allow yourself to be healed. With the caution that you may expect formidable obstacles from your own self in bringing this to fruition.

I continue to tell myself to focus on the defiance against resignation or despair, to negate the engulfing pessimism in every possible way. And all of this with the single goal of preserving myself (and as I told myself, for whatever that is worth!). An indelible dimension to this preservation comes from an innate sense of duty and accountability – to keep my family afloat and recover from this tragedy, to achieve the best possible outcomes with the large team that I am tasked to manage at the firm & to the leaders of the firm who have bestowed upon me this enviable responsibility. This actualization was an indispensable cog in my swing toward mental balance and health.

A more latent yet evolving aspect of this journey was how my withering sense of spirituality reacted to this. Borrowing Chris Martin’s phrase, I confess to being in prolonged state of ‘Spiritual Confusion’ and couldn’t accept or justify the words of the several who explained “everything happens for a reason”, or “you must be happy that she passed away without suffering” or even that “be satisfied with the fact that she lived the longest amongst her lineage!”. An important early act of my fortification against depression was my rejection of this sort of  self-deluding, naive, childish and unfounded reasoning that amongst other things pointed at our creator having good reason for permitting such a tragedy to befall on me.

As I begun speaking to enlightened friends to manage the fallout of this tragedy, an individual I lent on was Dr. GRK Sarma (Head of Neurology, St. John’s, Bangalore) about the evaluating me for signs of depression. During my informal evaluation and conversations, he spoke of the phases of grief aka. Kübler-Ross model. While the model seemed logical and greatly enhanced my understanding of grief, I can say that I didn’t ever trespass two of these phases and could possibly fall out of the prescribed order, probably even turn out to be cyclical rather than linear.

Anyone claiming victory over grief, is in my opinion, straddling an unfounded Utopian world. I believe grief to be inherent to the recovery of the human condition; this belief comes from literature that says grief it is part of the same dynamic that leads us toward greatness and heroism, the same dynamic to transgress existing boundaries and open new frontiers. As I write this piece, I could well say I have recovered well and potentially performing at a higher state than before this event, but stating I’m over this would be my very own Mission Accomplished moment.

For instance, I’ve identified an inexplicable situation of projecting this grief to entities unrelated to the event’s cause requires further self-reflection. A case in point is our own home, rebuilt thru 15 months of the family’s hard work.  The bizarre case was my reluctance to visit the extension of our home due to a pervading disappointment that my mother couldn’t step into this space. I managed this ‘phobia’ through some unusual measures – moving almost all of my art collection to this space, kicking off the design of the pending wood work etc.

The signs of these larger convolutions – of guilt, the mind being at large, the dynamic evolution of grief, the sense of despair – the outcome of these become palpably visible to the people interacting with me. Some instances in my own case being:

• In the immediate week post my return to work, while addressing a large group of our staff, I completely lost my train of thought and our HR kindly stepped in to complete the line as I blankly stared at several hundred people.
• Before my mother’s demise, I was thoroughly enjoying teaching a course on ethics to undergrad law students at Christ University, I couldn’t get myself to step into the class and had to ask a colleague to complete the remainder of the semester.
• At home, I was found calling out for my mother and breaking down at the very sight of our kitchen; literally her habitat/ lab of gastronomical excellence for four decades.

While such instances alarmed me at first, I can now say that the key to progression is firstly an acknowledgement that most of these behaviors are common outcomes of grief. And secondly, a heightened state of self-awareness will help in overcoming these less dangerous manifestations of grief.

A significant impetus to the process of recovery is to focus on activities that you enjoy. In my case –

• Movies – A central yet curious aspect to this emancipation has been avid film watching. In the past three months, I have watched more films than in the past three years. To contextualize this, the TV lay unused for two weeks since her passing. While flipping thru Netflix post this period, I curiously found my father and I talking more than we ever while watching a mini-series based on the life of Erwin Rommel, the famous WWII German General. This was an aha moment. I drew up a list of 10 movies that I thought would comfort us and invigorate conversation (i.e. my father though a decent English speaker couldn’t understand much of film-speak. The whole process of translating each of these movies and the resulting conversations was an uplifting experience!). The (growing) list of films are listed in the appendix at the end of this piece.

• Fitness – I asked a trainer, an old friend, if he’d help me get fit again with a time bound physical target. He asked if I’d be ready for 5 30 am start – YES!

An easier decision aiding the recovery was a complete ban on alcohol while notwithstanding my negligible consumption at normal times. My personal readings of the biographies of Eric Clapton and George Best made me acutely aware of its corrosive effects on an already wavering mind – BAN CONTINUES!

• Tennis – I asked my tennis coach, Prof. Guydeok Yeon, if I can restart playing after a 9 month gap. With no questions asked, he handed me his racquet and asked me to go serve – YES!

• The Team – I am privileged to lead an extraordinary team of individuals at the firm. Throwing myself at activities engaging with them has been an uplifting experience – we organized a football tournament, re-energized our team’s Inclusion and Diversity forum, engaged closely with three Sr. colleagues during their India visits, collaborating with our Sr. stakeholders from our client to shoot for a year end contest…..And I carry the emotion towards my Sr. colleagues across shores – Definitely YES!

The most powerful force behind this recovery has been the people who’ve propped us up. Going back to that fateful day, my brother-in-law’s parents rendered terrific support since the event and his father landed in the hospital within minutes of the event to help me thru this, mother fed us thru next few days. All four pall bearers were my colleagues at the firm. A friend drove me all the way to Mysore to disperse the ashes. Sandeep, DT, Nishanth – amongst my best friends showed up that evening and lent their hand in everything thru the next few days sacrificing their own time. My boss / friend of many years who traveled to Delhi just the previous day – flew back immediately to support in whatever way required and to just be here. Thru the thirteen days of festivities, colleagues sent us food ensuring we didn’t have to go thru the rigmarole of cooking. And these instances are just a small collection of the many precious acts of friendship.

Perhaps the purest form of this giving has been the unqualified and most honest sharing of feelings. Rev. Fr. Arun, who always wears a smile and discusses the NBA with me almost everyday, told of his parents being stuck in the horrible floods of Kerala – one parent afflicted with brain tumour and another with physical disability.  The priests at Christ Univ., who happen to be an indispensable part of my support system, had themselves dealt most courageously with their own tragedies – and this sharing was of great inspiration. My favourite teacher, Prof. Geetha, who lost three of her family members to heart disease in the past twelve months advised on reconciliation several weeks post the event and even caught my fainting sister in mid-air on the day. The Principal of the school where my sister & I studied offered us anything we wanted  – a watchman, a cook and unwavering moral support. A Sr. colleague from the UK who also happens to be a personal friend, who herself lost her father two years ago and contending with a struggling mother, has been a pivotal source of support. A Sr. colleague / friend from Accenture US and an ex-Managing Director / friend at Accenture India spent two hours each just listening to us and contextualizing with their own experiences. The CFO of our client in Australia called with a heartfelt note of grievance and a General Manager at our client made an in-person visit to grieve. Rev. Fr. Thomas C Mathew – within hours of undergoing a major surgery was helping me on reconciliation from his hospital bed and asked his hotel management. staff to give me a 12 week private cooking lessons; a life-skill I didn’t possess. And significantly, my girl friend helped shoulder the weight of this calamity & in a way impacted by all of this.

To cap off this memorium, is the realization that the institutions I’m associated with are immense in emotional stature & hold such affection for me.

As John Mayer sang… “Pain throws your heart to the ground, but love turns the whole thing around. You know it’s nothing new, bad news never had good timing, But then the circle of your friends, will defend the silver lining”, the ecosystem of our well wishers has been the most significant aspect of this rejuvenation. While I could claim to have achieved a fair number of victories in my lifetime, probably the most prized of them all is this vast and sincere amalgam of friends.

The process of grieving, while complex and painful, has showered many learnings – empathy, grit, giving, focus, compassion, self-awareness…the list is endless. Maybe, just maybe, it also made me stronger albeit without her by my side.

To my mother –

All your eyes have ever seen

All you’ve ever heard

Is etched upon my memory

Spoken through my words

 

All that I take with me

Is all you’ve left behind

We’re sharing one eternity

Living in two minds

Linked by an endless thread

Impossible to break

– John Petrucci / Dreamtheater

To the family – Anna, Shankar, Prema, Sumathi and Anush

——————————————————–

Movies that helped the process of healing:

1. Mystic River
2. Roma (Spanish)
3. The Lives of Others (German)
4. Saving Private Ryan
5. Tree of Life
6. Insomnia
7. Shawshank Redemption
8. Schindler’s List
9. Life is Beautiful (Italian)
10. The Constant Gardner
11. Lawrence of Arabia
12. Platoon
13. Infernal Affairs (Cantonese)
14. Hotel Rwanda
15. The Revenant
16. The Phantom Thread