What's In A Word - Part 2

This is a two-part post exploring the impact of words on our hearts and minds. You can read Part 1 here.

Widower, widow, orphan – words that evoke sadness, despair and, if you are fortunate enough to be the outsider looking in, pity. And then there are categories that don’t have a word to describe their experience of loss. Bereaved siblings… bereaved parents. There is a reason why these categories don’t have a descriptive word of their own. The dead are usually young and therefore the situation is beyond the pale of human imagination, and naming something is acknowledging its existence.

Most people are someone’s brother or sister and everyone is someone’s child, but as we cross into adulthood and maturity, more often than not, our primary identity shifts to being a spouse or a parent. So, a person who dies at the age of 65 or even 35 of a heart attack will first and foremost be described, by the world at large, as being so-and-so’s spouse or partner or someone’s parent. They have had the opportunity to evolve into someone or somebody, other than a child. Only the very young have their identities limited to child and sibling at a familial level, and for all our flaws as a species, we still baulk at the idea of a child dying.

Soon after Sakshi crossed over, I would spend most of my waking hours watching YouTube videos of NDEs and interviews or talks by other parents who have walked this path before me. And then I came across this Ted Talk by Sharon Delaney McCloud, an Emmy award winning news anchor-turned-speaker. In it she asked – what is the word that best describes her after the death of her daughter in 2005? I heard her use the word ‘Vilomah’ to describe her situation. Vilomah is a Sanskrit word that is slowly finding a foothold in conversations and means ‘against the natural order.’

Vilomah – it is an easier word to use than bereaved parent. Bereaved carries with it so much heaviness that I have begun to avoid this word. Vilomah, because of its relative newness (not in terms of age, but application and usage in this context) feels lighter and easier on my tongue, mind and heart. What's in a name? “That which we call a rose by any other name would smell just as sweet.” William Shakespeare uses this line in Romeo and Juliet to convey the idea that the naming of things is irrelevant. Or like Gertrude Stein famously wrote, “A rose is a rose is a rose is a rose.” But it is not just about what a word means according to the dictionary or how it sounds. It is about the centuries of meaning and all that weighty baggage attached to that word, that accompanies it, every time you or I use it.

What does a word mean? Does the power it has on us lessen when we repeat it and stare it in the eye over months and years? Only if we deaden ourselves to the feeling of it. Only if we agree to exist in a state of numbness, never fully partaking in the lush, emotion rich soup of life, can some skin-scouring words leave us untouched. The first year after Sakshi crossed over was by default a year of numbness. I could not feel – not out of choice, but because my body kicked into a primitive survival mode and protected me. Except for bouts of intense crying and heartbreak which could last for anything between half an hour to half a day, I breathed and walked as though under a dome of numbness. As that dome faded away, and I began to feel the force of the loss without any protective layers, I began to pay attention to words. Words I used while speaking to myself and to others.

I continue to be a fan of plain speak and calling a spade a spade (no point calling it a ‘flower planting soil digger.) But I have become softer and more flexible in life and in my relationship with words. Partly unconsciously, as Sakshi’s passing broke every single rigid wall in me, and partly by choice, as I realised that the only way I can survive this storm is by being a flexible bamboo as opposed to an oak. I am often tested by this conflict between softness and plain speak, but the one word that has really challenged me is the word, death.

In the months after Sakshi’s passing, I joined a couple of parent’s support group – to find my tribe, so to speak, as the world outside of this unfortunate club truly doesn’t get it. These groups (like all groups catering to a very fragile and vulnerable community) have their rules. One of them doesn’t allow for conversations to veer in to the spiritual as it doesn’t want any member-parent to be offended. The other group is for parents who believe that life continues albeit in a different form. I love this group, though it is awash with euphemisms. Every single one of those euphemisms, is rooted in kindness and is meaningful, but my intrinsically plain-speaking self struggled with some of them. They use words and phrases that soften the blow, for instance, shining light parents instead of bereaved parents. As I began to think about the language of grief a bit more with the passage of time, I began to think about these phrases and words. I concluded that while shining light parents is a beautiful description because we are parents of shining lights, I prefer the word vilomah for ease of usage. (I follow the groups’ rules while in the group, but I am talking here about how I used words in my head and in my writing and interactions outside the group.)

Then I began to look at death. My relationship with death has changed in the last few years. I had spent my 20s and early 30s fearing the loss of my loved ones. But now… having faced, endured and to a certain extent survived the worst, death is not something I fear. Yes, while I am alive, I live life to the fullest, as my way of honouring and remembering Sakshi. But I look forward to my last day on earth, even welcome it, because I know I will be reunited with my child. (My belief in the afterlife is based on NDEs and some experiences I have had, and is not religion-based.)

For the world, death is something to be feared. For me it is a doorway to something better. The word death arrives pre-laden with eons of societal fear and a sense of all-doors-closing finality, but it doesn’t reflect my lived reality. Yes, I miss my daughter beyond words, and yes, death is irreversible (I cannot tell you how hard I fought against this in my head and heart in the beginning. It was a fact I fought tooth and nail against, courting a certain madness as I schemed how to bring my daughter back from the dead) but I no longer look upon death as the enemy. I wanted a better word to describe this relationship… this state of being. Not because the words dead or death are bad in themselves, but because the way they are understood and used by all of us doesn’t reflect what I feel or believe.

In the group, I came across parents saying stuff like, ‘my child has graduated to the other side,’ or ‘my son has passed,’ or ‘my girl has crossed over,’ or ‘my child is across the veil.’ These phrases worked fine for me, however, I wanted a language that I can use to communicate not just within the group or with my own self, but with the outside world.

And then I came across a parent using the word transitioned, and I knew that this word resonated with me. The word transition means a change or shift from one state, subject, place, etc. to another. It is a perfect word for me. It does not come with the ancient, fear-laden heaviness of death, but describes perfectly the experience of death as per me – the shift from one state of being to another dead. It means that my daughter did not cease to be. She moved into a state I cannot access physically, but she is there. She continues to be.

This does not mean, you cannot use the word death or bereaved parent in your interactions with another person (bereaved or not) or with me. This is about the language I use… because these words are softer and gentler, and easier for me to handle. I am a vilomah and my daughter has transitioned.

I still use words like dead and death (this article is liberally sprinkled with them) but as with ‘blind’ and ‘disabled’ I prefer euphemisms when it comes to Sakshi. I am like a child who has just learnt how to cycle. These euphemisms are my training wheels and they are still on. One day… maybe, I will drop them and be able to use words like dead, death, blind and disabled in relation to my daughter, without missing a beat, but until then I choose to be kind to myself. What’s in a word? A lot apparently.

So dear reader, for those of you out there wondering, ‘So what the hell is expected of me?’ ‘what is the right thing to say?’ ‘what is the right word?’ I say - A word can slice open, or be gentle and help heal. Why use a hammer when a scalpel will do? And if unsure about what words to use, just be silently present. Conversations can be meditative, healing and connecting, but like Rumi said, “Silence is the language of God, all else is poor translation.”