Thirteen is an interesting age. I still remember the kind of demands I had at that age. A sense of protection, especially from a parent, is one big unsaid demand most have. This protection was addressing both my needs, physical and psychological. A kind of attachment got established with this protection. It made me feel safe. When it came to my mother, I was secure and assured that she is safe. However, this was not how I felt in the case of my father. That sense of assurance was missing. As I was getting mostly everything I wanted from him, I was constantly worried about his well-being. "Something will happen to my father and all this will stop" was my anxiety. There might be many reasons at the source of this thought. It can be because he had started taking medicines for diabetics and hypertension or it can be because he used to go out on a bike and my worry was he will meet with an accident and die. Maybe both, like a heart attack while driving his bike and so die because of that.
Death, yes death of my father was my number one worry as a teenager. I thought about this many times during the day, especially while sitting on the toilet. Every time my father returned home, it was a sigh of relief for me. But it lasted till he was out again. I simply didn't want the discontinuity of his protection to me and the family to be disrupted, and so death was not just a big disruption but an absolute end of that continuity.
I was scared as a child to see a dead body even if it was covered and far somewhere on the shoulders of the people carrying it for the final rites.
Death and the rituals around it had always been very dark and negative to me. Maybe it's something which many people have in common. I was scared as a child to see a dead body even if it was covered and far somewhere on the shoulders of the people carrying it for the final rites. All those rituals would create a negative space in my mind and now I can say that there was a huge significance to that whole drama in my thoughts. I ensured not to cross the final rites processions and was cautious not to step on the flowers on the road as they were thrown on the dead body. Very near the playground, I went to play, there was a crematorium. Every time I saw a dead body being burnt, it disturbed the hell out of me. Although, I also had some friends who had no problem in eating a coconut or lemon placed outside (sometimes inside) the crematorium
So, I didn't want anything related to death, forget about happening but even to be discussed. And here I was as a teenager dealing with this same fear, the fear of death of my father. I will discuss in the next post what happened to that continuity of protection and how death has several ways of manifestation. As a thirteen-year-old though, I knew only one thing, I wanted my father to be safe and alive forever.
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