Hakimudddin Radhanpurwala Week #16--the chair that left Rocking

Once, I remember her sitting on a chair not too long ago, her eyes greeting the heavens, hands tucked on top of one another, and an undefinable smile that let those around her know that she very well knew who she was. To be quite frank, if you ask anyone at all, she didn't remember much; the only exception for her memory were the years cradled away on the chair—rocking away signatures of her past, unwilling to accept that she was burdened by the deceit of time. Those, like myself, who knew her, had also come to the conclusion that she, who never left the chair, remained speechless for the eternity that we had known her. She might have slurred a few words here and there, thrown out an unacquainted greeting at the average passerby, but her words never said much—perhaps because the voice itself, after all these years, had forgotten its origin. 

I tried my best at first: reiterating our vows, lighting a bonfire between a pail of sand to commemorate our last dance, hugging her tightly in my arms and intertwining our feet in my poor attempt to lay in bed with her for the very last time, and then placing the little one in his mother's lap for her to collect; and the response to every instance was left unnamed. And every time I tried, I'd see the child in her arms giggle and lose its breath, and I'd look at both their faces and feel the weight of time pass by like sand through my fingers. So I spent our final years pressing hope upon her shoulders, rocking her back and forth, and wondering if her eyes would ever meet mine. But I realized soon enough that hope smeared against a blank canvas would learn to dissolve as quickly as it came; leaving the painting unmemorable and forgotten. And the realization is what led me to leave and forget the woman who rocked in her solemnity—too afraid to address the actuality of life.

Now, pressing my shoulders against the same chair, I let my eyes greet the few words she had left for me in her passage. It was the first in a long time I ever had the chance to hear her voice—slowly pulsating through the blotted parchment. And as such, I rocked on the chair and let her speak for me:

"I know, by the time you read this, I'll have been unfamiliar with you. Faces, names...but never should you think I'm lost from your arms. Something may have left me, and that piece of my soul aches for reasons I'll never know. But I'd like you to remember me, not as I was, but who you had seen me become—for there is nothing more precious than knowing the pieces of you buried between my soul will live with me, tethered to moments tucked in places that I can spend my life finding. I'll still feel the warmth of your hand, the cackle of the child, and the sweet song of our memory. It may feel as though it'll slip from you one day, but stay keen on remembering that what we once created isn't tarnished by what we face now, for moments remain immovable—only ever rocking back and forth—unburdened by the sanctions of time. And as fitting as the final circuit of our acquaintance, I'll plead you to love and know that I will never be who you wish me to be; I am only who you remember once being..."

And now I rock and cradle her words, ever careful to let the grains of sacred ink slip between my fingers, reverberating the echoes of her voice and the blessings of her memories to the child sinking on my lap—growing all the more curious on how the world once felt through his mother's touch.

And as the chair stills, I leave what's left of my words here—rocking no longer, but remembered all the same...