Inevitability and pain of having to let go
Does being connected really make up for physical separation? In this day and age, we are connected 24x7, whether it is by email or the mobile. The BlackBerry Messenger not only keeps you connected 24 hours but also gives
updates on your status and whereabouts and even how you are looking! You also know when your messages are read by your contact. This way, you can figure out when your contact is on the phone, on a flight or sleeping by checking how and when your messages get delivered. You no longer need to call a friend and say “Hey, what’s up?” Being physically separated does not become a heartbreaking situation anymore, or does it?
The safest place in the world when I was a little girl was my father’s lap. It was warm and there wasn’t any other place I would rather have been in. After school, I would go to his office and sit in the adjacent room so I could hear him conduct his meetings. And when he would travel, I would cry the night before, begging him not to go. At night, I would keep a shirt of his close to me to cuddle. I could not bear the physical separation. He often sais, “You should not be so attached to me, as one day I will be gone.” I paid the price for this attachment when he was gone. Was it wrong, then, to be so attached?
I remember my daughter Tiara’s tiny fingers curled tightly around mine, not letting go. Every time I had to leave her as a baby, I would have to sneak out when she was sleeping or not looking. She would cry, begging me not to leave on the night before my travel.
I had held her fingers tight all through the journey when I was dropping her off at boarding school, convincing myself that it will not be so bad every time. “I am just a phone call away,” I told her, sounding unconvincing to both her and me. Her hand is now as big as mine, but she is still a baby to me.
The lump in my throat stayed the whole day. “As soon as you get free, message me and tell me how your first day went,” I told her as I was letting go. “BBM me 50 times a day, I want to know everything you do,” I said, holding my tears back. She ran into an induction class, turning back once to say a quick bye, taking the wind out of me. It was the first time she was leaving home.
“It’s the toughest thing to let go, but they have to go and make their own lives,” I was told. “Three months,” my mother tells me, “Then it gets better. I cried my heart out when your brother went to the US.”
Life is short, should we really live it separated from people we dearly love? “That’s the way life is,” my mother assures me. I know that no amount of emails or messages make up for the feeling of holding a hand tightly or giving and getting a warm loving hug.
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