The two empty slots in my life

The World conspires with us in divine ways. It has its own set of rules, that govern our lives. We challenge with all things nature, yet some of them are bound to happen, no matter how much we try to prevent them.

Mother nature is all powerful. How much ever humankind has tried to bend her rules, yet she has a way of correcting her course in the original natural way that it has always been. She will allow alteration to happen, but their is always a price humankind has to or will have to pay someday. That is how her Will works. She is a divine, she is almighty and she wills her wrath and her blessings in her own way.

Each of us, has some void, some emptiness in our lives. For some it is materialistic, for some it is physical and for some it is virtual. We all have some desires that we wish we had, but at the same time we know there is no way it will be.

There are ways we can fill our materialistic voids. Even we can fill the virtual ones of course with VR headset ! But can we, in real, fill our physical voids. By physical, I mean presence of someone we loved or wanted to love. 

For me, it is two very important persons, whom I wish to be exis or I wish was never lost.

One is having a Sibling of my own blood. I am a single child of my parents. I don't have someone to call a brother or a sister as my own blood. I am not talking about cousins, but a very own blood sibling. From childhood, I always wished for a sibling. But deep within, I knew, we were a financial poor family. A lower-middle class family. But we were intellectually a rich family. 

A family of three was enough and was all we could subsist. And most importantly, they wanted  their one child, me, have all the basic benefits of a child and the child to not be bound to share a part due to another sibling's presence. They wanted me to get all the love and all the resources. But it came at a dear price for them as well as for me. I was raised through hardships, our family faced, yet they tried to not let me down. And I will always be grateful for what my parents have done for me. They always kept it in mind that I am to become an intellectually strong person.

But, yes, the price being,  I have always felt a lack of a sibling. I will never understand, what is it to have your own sibling. How will the relationship be between sibling? I can only observe other siblings laugh, play, fight, cry, howl, run, tease and enjoy a good laugh together. How-much ever empathetic, we are or we can be, there is no way we can feel the significance of a sibling's presence if we don't have one of our own.

I ask people, what is it to have a sibling?

I like listening them talk about their experiences with their brothers and sisters. The times when they supported each other in childhood days from nasty bullies. The times when they fought like sworn enemies over petty things. The time when one of them cried over the illness of the other. How a sister prayed to God for recovery of her brother and how a brother prayed God to give his sister all the strength to win a local beauty pageant.

I ask them why they do all these things for each other?

An their most significant answer is that there is no reason at all for why they do what they do for their siblings. It is a relationship made in heaven. It is divine. The is no if and there is no. It is automatic. It just happens.

There is a very strong inner power which makes siblings live for each other. It is God-made. And in no way can that power be understood. But yes they can feel its power. That automatic "feel good factor" for siblings. Its like, it is almost Cosmic.

And yet I will never understand or even feel that Cosmic power of siblings. How much I try to experience it, or how much ever I try to fill the void, it is never going to happen. It is God's will and it will be that way. And Whatever happens in life happens for a reason.

So at maximum, I can do is feel good looking and listening to these Awesome and Lively Siblings from different cultures and countries. To hear their life, their experiences, their good and their bad days.

The equally significant person is my father. I barely knew my father till I was eight years-old. This is because of his nature of Government Job. He had a lot of transfers from one place to another and then another in those initial years. And he did not want me to burden with that. So he kept mom and I in Guwahati so that I remained in the same school. A stability. 

Finally he managed to place himself at Guwahati. And in 1997, we settled and started living together as a family of three. But Mother Nature had other plans, After 11 years of togetherness, yet again, She took him away from me. This time she welcomed him to heaven. 

I was not even officially an adult when I lost him to the Gods. I had not even finished College. I was devastated. How will I be able to continue my education which he so dearly provided for me? How will I be able to honour my father's wish to complete my education? Yet, I and mom struggled harder and was able to finish college. I got so determined, I even secured a Master's Degree. I started working after college, saved money and utilised that money to pay for my tuition for Master's at University.

And yet, I will always have a void, an absence of my father in my adulthood. I will never understand that phase of relationship between a father and a son. So what do I do? I observe. 

I observe sons/daughters of my age and above's relationship with their father. I see them laughing and partying at their son's and daughter's success. I have seen them getting in arguments. I have seen them having separate opinions on matters of family, society, community, politics, friends and economics. The Son will want a new car to purchase, but the father will tell him to conserve money for a better home in the future. The daughter will want to spend more on her fashionable clothes, but the father will ask her to save them for her future self. The son will say that he will have a say on such and such matter and there will be arguments over whose decision will be final. The mother/wife will have to control the Son-Father duo. 

These are part of life which happens as people age. And yet I will never be able to have it. I too want a good laugh with father or even a burning argument over important decisions. But is it ever going to happen. Never. Because once a parent is lost, it is for forever. It is God's will and Nothing can be done about it. 

But I deter not, even though there will always be these two empty slots in my life. I at the most can content myself that I have been fortunate to spend time with my cousins and feel them like my own blood even though they are not. I have to be content that I was lucky to be able to spend 12 years of togetherness with my father. That's all I can do and live life and move forward. 

I make up my mind to let Feel Good at what I have had so far. All beautiful things are temporary. So when and wherever we get beauty, we need to cherish it for the limited time we  have with it. We need to embrace the fact that we need to be at peace with this temporariness. Only that way we can live happily and not desire something to be forever.

Life is temporary, so family members will definitely be temporary. And between those two, The beginning and The end, what we get, needs  to be enjoyed to the fullest. 

There are millions of individuals like me. I have shared my thoughts. Dear Readers, be sure to share your own experiences too. 

Finally I quote a beautiful line from The Shape of Water, "Life is but the Shipwreck of our Plans."