However this July as we approached your second death anniversary month I felt the heaviness in my heart sink in. It would not go Apu. It was like a physical force that was sitting on my chest. I acknowledged it but it stayed with remarkable persistence. Tell me, is that when you decided to play your master card?

Tell me Apu,by what twist of the universe was I wheeled into the ICU this month but this time fully cogent and super aware despite the carbon dioxide that had flooded my bodyand caused me to lose consciousness at home? Hypercapnia I believe is what it is clinically called. Yet as I was being wheeled into the ICU I regained my consciousness and as the wheel chair made its familiar turn into the ICU unit of the hospital where you had spent your last night I noted every single detail. I even told your Arvinder aunty who was walking alongside me please keep my reading glasses carefully. In the inner flap of my bag you will find an envelope – please give the money to Anita as she will be leaving for her village tonight. “Done” said Arvinder aunty briskly striding along. The door to the ICU swung open. I was alert and awake. I noticed that several beds close to the ICU main door were empty. But that is not where we stopped. We went all the way up to the last bed at the end of the ICU unit. To my utter amazement I was lifted and placed on that bed. Super alert by now I looked at Arvinder aunty, stunned. And said slowly and clearly,Arvinder do you know what bed this is? It is Apu’s bed! This is the bed in which Apu left his body in July 2022. And this is July 2024 and I have been brought to it.

The hospital is a place which thrives on evidence based science the kind you and your father were heavily into. What evidence based science explains this Apu? Coincidence? What kind of coincidence engineers that a mother who has lost her child lands up on the same bed, same hospital two years hence? I mean of all the beds in the ICU, THIS ONE? As I put my head on the same spot where I had seen you put yours it was like a portal opened up. I felt your protective shield wrap itself around my body. And as I lay there on the same bed where you had left your body two years ago I felt your pulsating energy all around me. Suddenly I began to see all the drama that plays out in the ICU though your eyes. Remember how on your last day on earth you were keeping me in splits with your astute observations of the ICU? This time you were in your element as you kept directing my attention to various activities that were happening in that liminal space of the ICU unit where life and death appear to be separated by a razor thin line.

All over sudden, I was inundated with what I can only call “thought pops” that were clearly coming from you. No I did not “hear” your voice. I did not “feel” your touch. But I felt you flood me with what I can only describe as hilarious memes, the outrageous kind you specialize in. There is no way I could have generated these thoughts. They bore your classic signature tune. You know what was mind bending? You made me laugh through my stay in ICU! Who does this Apu?

In the days that followed I wondered time and time again how could I make sense of this? What were you trying to teach me? That death is not darkness? That death is not only light it can also be a ton of laughter?That like the Tibetan Book of the Dead had concluded,perhaps there is really no such thing as death? As I felt your effervescent energy swirl around me, were you messaging me that death is just energy transforming itself and there is absolutely no need to take it so seriously and surround it with so much gravitas? That your own almost cavalier attitude to death came out of your deep realisation that being in your body is not what you would call “such a big deal” nor was it necessarily the natural state of existence? This much I know: In that ICU unit lying on that bed at least for those five days, you helped me transcend some invisible barrier and become the “witness consciousness” able to observenot just what was happening around me but also what was happening to me. Your omnipresent sense of humour has remained with me always so I guess you had to package these deep learnings in a way that made your mother hold on to her numerous tubes and cardiac monitor and laugh with you. Seriously Apu?

Suddenly my “July” heaviness lifted and dissipated like a cloud. And you having taught your mother an amazing life lesson flew off again to your other realms. I was home before your second death anniversary. A day before that the roses in our garden – long dormant – burst into flame and the guava tree I planted in your memory displayed its first green fruit. Fly free beloved child. Fly with joyful abandon over your favourite guava trees replete with the greenest of fruits and rest in the softness of rose petals when you are weary.

With love always
Maa