She called my name as I was rushing to the door. I paused and decided she hadn’t, but something compelled me to go back and check....
HEART TO HEART
She called my name as I was rushing to the door. I paused and decided she hadn’t, but something compelled me to go back and check. I am glad that I did, because that was the last time I ever embraced her fully, tightly and closely.
We went out for a walk one day, my ‘Nano’, as we called her, and I. It was an early spring morning. The air was slightly cold but strangely fresh, and the streets of Islamabad were wide and clean. I took her hand as we started walking from outside her house, occasionally stopping so she could catch her breath. She was diabetic and had heart disease, so walking was not her strength. We made it halfway down the street and then back to her house, stopping at her small but well-maintained lawn. A jasmine plant had climbed up and spread over the top of a short wall, which was the reason for our stop. I stretched out my arm to reach it and plucked some sweet-smelling, pearl-white jasmine flowers.
Jasmine happened to be her favourite flower, as well as her own name. She would cup both hands around the flowers and bring them close to her nose to inhale their pure, natural fragrance. Sometimes, she would pass a thread through many flowers, one at a time, making a string and then tying the loose ends together to form a bracelet. She wore the string around her bun too and occasionally tied a couple of flowers to her earrings. She kept a handful of flowers on her bedside table, on top of a drawer, replacing them every other day. It was an ordinary routine in which my grandpa also took part by bringing in a handful of jasmine flowers and emptying them into my Nano’s hands. No words were exchanged, just a nod of gratitude and perhaps a quiet “thank you”. It was one of those ordinary things that we imagined would last forever. After all, ‘What novelty is worth that sweet monotony where everything is known and loved because it is known.’ - George Eliot. If only we had realised that routines break and monotony can become something deeply longed for.
“In the same bedside drawer, she kept pencils for me and colouring pencils with one side blue and the other red, along with erasers and plenty of sharpeners.” to “In the same bedside drawer, she kept pencils and colouring pencils for me as well as erasers with one side blue and the other red and plenty of sharpeners”
She taught me my ABCs and the days of the week, patiently guiding my hand as I traced the letters. She dropped me off on my first day of school, carrying the pink Barbie lunchbox she had bought for me. She attended my school functions with pride and a presence that made me feel like the luckiest girl in the world. It was the same presence that made every birthday special and every milestone worth celebrating.
The Fridays spent at her house, filled with hours of boredom, small errands and burdensome tasks like massaging her feet for what felt like forever, have now become my deepest desires. I remember that she bought us cookies-and-cream ice cream one Friday when I was twelve. We rented a movie, ate lunch and later that day my cousins and I played with a ball in the drawing room. It was a day like any other Friday. Yet now I think that perhaps I would have hugged her more tightly and held on for a little longer. Perhaps I would have said “thank you” more lovingly or told her how much I loved her.
If only I had known that it would be the last Friday I would ever spend with her. The last time she would place her arms around my neck and kiss my cheek lightly. The last time she would clench her teeth, widen her eyes and scold us for hitting the drawing-room chandelier with a ball. Perhaps I would have done all those things if I had realised that moments become memories far too quickly.
I shared something special with her, and that became painfully clear the day she passed away, the very next Friday, on 12 June 2020. It was my first experience of loss at the age of twelve. That day was not easy at all. It was hard to walk into the same room expecting a hug and a gentle kiss, only to find an empty bed. It was hard for a twelve-year-old. Teary-eyed, I looked at her belongings: her cup, the slippers beneath her bed, everything waiting for someone who had left in a hurry and forgotten to return.
But there was no one coming back to wipe away the dust gathering on the drawer that I traced with my fingers. I opened it to a familiar sight: colouring pencils, blue-and-red erasers and countless sharpeners. And on top of the drawer lay a handful of light-brown, wilted, lifeless jasmine flowers, the last remnants of a sweet monotony.
