Just another day

”One more night, one more night....”.... Phil Collins classic tune but with incorrect lyrics hums its way into my mouth.....but I try to stop myself, irascibly. Suddenly, “Have you seen him? Have you?”  asks the voice in anxious whispers…”If only I could be with him just one more time......just another day in paradise” it utters with a voice burdened by invisible struggles, a voice, trapped in a smoke filled room without windows... ”One more day, one more day,  in paradise”....again..i cant stop it and I smile, that wry grin of mine that greets me every morning and can mean multiple things, amusement, pity, disgust, disdain, sorrow..yup my “go to” expression. A grin that conceals all and a song that reveals more than it should, these are my saviours.

As always a bundle of contradictory thoughts and actions are an ever present and unique aspect of my behavioural entourage. I often think sad thoughts while grinning and even sing chirpy songs while drowning my teary eyed alter ego in oblivion. When he passed away, and they brought his glorious six foot one body in a wooden box, along with all my dead dreams in it I could hear myself singing the BeeGee’s classic “tragedy..dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun, tragedy”. Dark humour, I am a master of it or rather it is the master of my guileless mind. In dire and most inopportune situations this unfortunate defender of mine pops up shielding me from unbearable pain.

Sometimes, I wish I could grieve like others, yell out and cry. But I can’t and when I do I often find myself thinking in the third person with an utterly judgemental and unsympathetic perspective. Then comes along another song or another wry thought, like…. all that mucous on his old jacket into which I am crying is gonna make it smell bad or that Mukund is definitely gonna say what he always said when I cried. That I look uglier than usual with the red nose and all that goo coming out of my nostrils. True, true, I have always wondered how women manage to look pretty while crying or sleeping. I look like a snoring ogre with half open eyes when I sleep. Yup, no sleeping beauty do I maketh!!! But still, he loved me and gave me a kiss on my forehead every morning before he left for work, despite my scary early morning visage 

There is one lucid thought that survives every whirlpool of grief and descend into insanity. “What if I had one more day with him, what would I have done”. The yearning in my thoughts cannot be felt through these words unless you have felt the same loss. Nor can you figure out much from my expression. Hell, I can’t, how will you? But it is there, I assure you, unmistakably, definitely and unwaveringly. One more day, One more day in paradise. It’s all I think about. Oftentimes, I don’t have the courage to go beyond this thought, to dwell on that one day, to let go of reality and indulge in dreaming up an ideal day with the man I love who returned from far beyond. Do you realise how difficult that is, because on one hand you miss him with everything you have and yet you are petrified of even dreaming up a few moments with him, because you will breakdown every time and you are tired of feeling those tears dripping down your cheeks. What can be done to still it….nothing. You can try and think about another man, but that will suffocate you with guilt, wash you in disgust and the taste of betrayal revolt you intensely. "Its raining men” around me, but I don’t notice them, can’t or don't want them and worse than all this is that I have no choice when it comes to going  back to what I had. 

So "here I am", stuck in the middle of nowhere, humming songs that might make no sense to you but is weighed down with irony…this is how my life goes, "not with a bang but with a whimper" ..and then the songs....."One more night"...."just another day ...for you and me  in paradise".