The tale of two aunts

In the last two months, two of my aunts (periyamma) passed away. The first one had two sons, three daughters and ten grand children. The first son is a retired Engineer from PWD; the second son an agriculturist; one of the daughters is a teacher; other two daughters are married to businessmen; one of the grand son is a business man; another grand son is a computer science research scholar at IISc, Bangalore. But this periyamma’s old age life, despite having such a large family, was very troubled. No body was willing to take care of her and as a result she was kept in an old age home for some years before she became very ill. During the funeral, there was reflectance among the sons to perform the rights. The IISc scientist grand son didn’t even bother to remove his shoes at the funeral ground near the pyre. As soon as the funeral was over, every one was in a hurry to get back to normal schedule and hence the final rite (karumadhi) was performed urgently, not even wanting for all the relatives to participate and pay their respect.

The second periyamma was not a direct relative, though she was living with my sister’s family for the last 18 years. She was 95+ when she died. She lost her husband when she was very young and had no children. When she died, my brother-in-law, though did not have any obligation, performed all the rituals assuming the place of her son. I performed the rituals assuming to be her maternal side representative. The funeral was well attended, the entire neighbourhood and all the relatives attended and payed their homage. The last rite (karumadhi) was performed at Perur, without skipping any of the rituals.

I wonder about this irony. One lady, with a large family chain and educated family members spent her last days almost like an orphan. Even in her death, I felt that she did not get the respect she really deserved. Her demise was a relief to many.

But the other lady, though having no surviving blood relationship or a legal family for more than fifty years, lived and died as a complete family person. Many miss her today.

The revelation is that, the completeness in life comes not with the physical presence of family members. But with the love and affection we nurture among them.

Life is just not about living with family members. It is about creating a family out of the members living with.