My hand was trembling. The gun rattling in my grip. Infront of my stood Ronold Mcdonald. I knew what what I had to do. I raised my arm, and pulled the trigger. (ALSO READ: 30 tell-all confessions of Bollywood's worst husbands)
What followed was something that was both breathtaking and nerve-racking. I did know what I was doing. I watched my first-born limp away to his own quiet cemetery. And I fell to my knees. Did all my dreams vanish into thin air, did all the dreams of my other two children die with him? Did I, too, become a tragic parent? It didn't take me long to realise that they, too, were slowly dying without their father, their hero.
That night, I couldn't sleep. I cried like a broken-hearted child, not because my child was dead, but because of the dreams I had that died with him.
What haunted me most was my one-and-only son. I was beyond heartbroken and shattered. He used to be the one who brought me happiness. He would run his fingers through my hair, ask me questions and make me laugh like no one else. I thought I'd have my child with me all my life, he was my little miracle, and all this heartache and grief had robbed me of the brightest hope I had in the world.
Life, sadly, is unfair. It was by sheer serendipity that my son came back to me. My workmates – after making me cry and desperately promise me that it would all be okay – had decided to celebrate the boy's death by having a little party, and we started going to a nursing home to dance with our dead sons. They could be like us, they could feel pain. It was a sadistically funny idea, to celebrate a life cut short so cruelly. But there I was, dancing with a nurse-come-dancer. This little experiment only made me feel sadder and more horrible. It was just the natural expression of my grief and pain. But dancing, did it make it all better? My shattered dreams? That hardly seemed to be the case.
After that incident, and many more in the years that followed, my son has been my constant companion. We get each other through every heartbreak and loss, our entire lives. Our bond was so tight, I realised that he was really a person inside my body. But, when I went to court for my son's wedding, that's when the pain started. My parents were ecstatic to see their son getting married. But when I tried to sit in the wedding hall, the irony of my situation hit me hard. There I was, half a year away from being declared as the mother of a dead boy, only to be seated beside his bride. He was our day. I watched in disgust as he slowly touched my shoulder and thanked me for attending his wedding. I wanted to smack him. He had the audacity to thank me for going to a family gathering that he hadn't bothered to make any effort to attend in our lifetime. I watched in wonder as he jumped around with his mother. I wanted to tell her to stop looking at her happy daughter-in-law as if she had found an angel. It was like the feeling I'd had when I watched my son, lifeless, dragged to his own funeral. I wanted to tell her to stop giving me the warm fuzzies.
I watched him bathe his bride with tears rolling down his cheeks. He was a man now. But the second his mother-in-law saw me, she started crying. That, more than anything else, made me know he had chosen me as his mother. But I was there because my son made me that way, he made me believe that life would never let me down. As I walked back home that night, I looked at my neighbours' homes. Everyone was still asleep. I walked to the window to watch the night. I looked out and saw a man standing at the end of our street. My son had found his true love. I watched as he stood at the end of the street and went into her house. He had a family now. A home. That made me smile. He didn't have to dance anymore, because life had given him that.
I didn't leave my home for weeks after that. Every time my son and I entered the house, we smiled. He asked me if I wanted to cook. Yes, I did. I asked him if I could buy some peanuts. Yes, I could. I asked him if he wanted me to drive him to the bazaar for flowers. Yes, he did. I am alive because my son had made me that way. He made me believe that life would never let me down.