The world after your last goodbye and farewell!

“One should always leave loved ones with loving words, it may be the last time you see them” – this quote has immense depth in meaning and with the valuable lesson of life that it conveys.

Goodbyes, deaths and farewells – the most difficult and dreadful times of life. All of these are those forms of journeys for which there is no returning back or the return is delayed. With death, it is definitely the ultimate end , the road of no return. Since the pandemic started, we have lost many of our loved ones in most of the households. I have also faced the loss of my loved ones and it has left a deep scar on my conscience – some due to COVID and some due to other illnesses. Death being the end of life with loss of heart beats and breath, can be that big void that haunts our lives that can never be filled and it is only with time that one heals and comes out of the loss.

To think of goodbyes or farewells, it has either been end of school or college with graduations or someone who leaves abroad or the company. In my firm, I have had virtual farewells – a trend that I started last year due to pandemic, where we meet up on a virtual meeting and bid goodbye with our best wishes to our colleagues who quit. All these experiences of goodbyes and farewells speak volumes about humanity, our nature, our experiences and about life as a whole.

A lot of questions have been running on my mind after experiencing such tough goodbyes and dreadful loss of loved ones –

• Why does it take sadness to know the worth of happiness, noise to appreciate silence and absence to value presence? Why is life ironic as the quote mentions?
• Why don’t we show our love and care to our loved ones when they are alive and present with us? why does it take ‘death’ to make us realize our love and respect for them?
• Why does it take death to make us realize all their efforts that helped make our lives easier?
• Why do we take our loved ones for granted and not listen to them or their advices but post their death, we are ready to remember their talks and values and abide by them? Is it still too late?
• Why do we remember a person’s helplessness or worst times only after his/her terrible last days of suffering and death (irrespective of how his/her nature had been throughout their life)?
• Why does death make us realize that the fight we had , the ego we maintained was useless. We realize forgiveness or apologize when we see the other person on his deathbed. Why?
• Why does it take a life event like farewell or quitting to make a person realize the good in you and speak to you with gratitude and whole heartedness?  Why does this happen one last time and always when the end is near?
• As a worker, an employee who has worked hard with all their best efforts and time – is not valued and quits, why does it take an exit survey or exit interview to realize the management’s mistakes of non-appreciation, unnecessary burdening and partiality that led to the loss of the employee and eventually loss of value to the company?
• Why do we need photos and videos of loved ones and most times, the material things like their clothes, their favorite food , their things etc to miss them or show them love? Why do we fail to hug them, express our love and make them feel valued while they are alive and present?
• Why did it take a pandemic like COVID for us to realize the worth/value of a human life after we faced hardships, saw our family members suffer, lose them after a strong battle of life and death and then weep their loss?
• Why do our birthday plans be special and grand only for a 18^th , 25^th or 50^th – why not a 12^th , 15^th or a 45^th or the next upcoming birthday?

All these questions really hit our hearts hard enough to make us realize and wonder what is our main purpose of life, what is the value of our equations with our loved ones and makes us feel guilty when we face the harsh truth of how we take each other for granted.

The biggest and worst of goodbyes – losing our loved ones to death. Death – the eternal end they say. ‘Death – A country of no return’ and the final destination of life. Death – the times when we are surrounded by all – our loved ones, our enemies, those with whom our equations soured with situations and with passing of time but when our last breath ends, their ego/enmity gets forgotten and they come to pay their last respects as well. Death is the time when God/Almighty seals us to unite with Him forever. The last time when everyone comes together and bereaves. The last time when no amount of wealth we accumulated in this world, no amount of arrogance or ego we carried goes with us – the only things we carry is the good words, the good deeds we did during our lives, the impact we created or the amount of inspiration we gave to others which we lived.

In the recent times, my experiences of funerals and deaths have been surreal. Having lost some of my relatives in the last few years, makes me realize the worth of life and how people value your life and death differently. Ever since I attended funerals since childhood, I am always shaken. Those last respects, the last words, the chatters between people who come and pay their last respects about how good the person was or how unfortunate the incident happened that led to their death always stayed on my mind. Right from a young teenage daughter losing her mother, 3 little kids losing their parents in an accident where the kids miraculously survived but their parents did not, losing my grandmother to cancer, losing my 37-year-old cousin brother to his most passionate yet dangerous skill – bike racing, losing my favorite school teacher to liver cancer, losing two of my uncles and my favorite aunt to heart attacks and recently losing a happy go lucky jovial colleague to cancer. With all my experiences of losing closed ones, attending their funerals I have realized how the “last” of everything matters – when a loved one dies, all that people speak of is how did this happen, how did the last breath go, what were his/her last words, what did he/she do in their last moments etc. We then take those final moments of funeral to weep, to regret, to remember what kind of a person he/she was, to see their face for one last time before they are taken to burial ground or to the cremation grounds for their last rights.

COVID – the disease with which majority of our homes were affected. Some lost their elders, some young ones and for some, the entire family was killed by the harsh effect of this disease. A close friend of mine in office lost his uncle to Covid – His uncle, the most jovial, his father figure, someone who was always full of humor and positivity. With the pictures he put up after losing him, all of these qualities of him, came to life. When I had a discussion with him during his uncle’s hospitalized struggling days, I realized how much effort he took, running from pillar to post to get him admitted in the best hospital to get the best medical care, getting oxygen support to medicines – all of which were scarce at that moment and black marketed. The country was facing the most painful times with such shortages. Even during those difficult times, people took undue advantage. I remember my friend mentioning this – “When the time is near for death, it will happen. No amount of money can buy life, if it has to end, it will. No matter how much we spent, sacrificed everything to get him the best medical care, the end was evident”.

This year, on 1^st January I lost one of my uncles to a heart attack. During this time his eldest daughter, my cousin sister was in Indonesia. She has been settled there since 2018. Owing to the pandemic, due to government’s restrictions on international flights, she could not make it to the funeral. Among all the 3 daughters, she was the only one away from her family during this bereavement. When we attended the funeral, we saw how she was craving to look at her father for one last time. I took it up on me to hold the phone so that her other sisters could support their mom during this difficult time because she was broken by the sudden loss. Her mother was inconsolable as she never thought that the bye he waved when he left home that morning was his last. The video call was on, I held the angle in such a way so that she could see her dad’s face in the coffin (kept for all to pay their last respects) as well as her mom and sisters, as an indication that she was with him, although virtually. It pained my heart to realize how many of us struggled through Covid times where we failed to give our last due respects to our loved ones who passed away with Covid.

Funerals – the last goodbyes, the last time we weep with regrets, the last time we pray for their soul and bereaving families, our last remembrances with good words on our lips, the last time we take them on our shoulders and the last time they are united with earth. With Covid, human beings were so unfortunate that even this last event of paying last respects had to be given a miss. No last respects, no seeing them for the last time, no carrying them on our shoulders, no crying, no weeping on each others’ shoulders, no support to one another of any sort and no last goodbyes with prayers – Covid pushed us to such extreme that giving support to the dead and those bereaving also ended. Covid brought a lot of harsh truths to our life, the way we live, the way we care or don’t care, our attitudes, our rituals – everything was shaken.

But why does death teach us the harsh reality or remind us to be good in life? I remember reading this in an article where the question was – “What would you want the world to tell you when you are on your deathbed?”. Ironically, even counsellors or psychiatrists and even those who write articles on ‘positivity’ trick you to change your mindset from depression/sadness to having a goal-oriented focus by this one question – does it make you realize how good a life you lived or how unfortunate it was as must have missed out on best chances?. I found this extreme because we are pushing a person to a dead end (literally a dead end) to make him/her realize the true worth of living, the true worth of not wasting time and to achieve goals – those goals that could be materialistic or non-materialistic depending on their interests. It takes death or loss to make us realize the true worth of everything, period!

Now coming to farewells – we bid goodbye or more so a ‘fare well’ with best wishes to the ones who leave the company, our school/college graduation or those going abroad for their new ventures or studies or settling abroad for good. Since the year 2020, I have handled over 20 virtual farewells at office where I host the meeting, allowing the person leaving to share his/her farewell speech or message reminiscing old memories of their work tenure and time with colleagues, sharing his/her gratitude to the team members after which I throw open the meeting to the participants to share their experiences and best wishes to him/her and close the session within an hour. The longer the tenure of the person in the company, the longer stories/experiences people have to share and that exceeds the usual time of the 1 hour which I block on everyone’s calendar. With our usual busy routines, this is the least we could do by dedicating this time to the person leaving and thank him/her for their efforts, share our best wishes and bid goodbye.

I also prepare a farewell E Card on a Powerpoint – adding each colleague’s message with their name on every slide and then email it to the person quitting as a token of memories of the company. Most people who are shy to speak on call or want to be personal about their farewell message, send it in writing and I am able to add it to this card I prepare. Thanks to Google photos, when we have faces added in our photo gallery, I go to the exiting employee’s face, click and gather the best photos and make a quick collage. By the end of that day when he/she leaves, I drop a final goodbye mail to the person marking the entire team, thanking and wishing them good luck and add that collage as a token of gratitude and for good memories’ sake. All these activities have a lot of significance to me personally. I put my heart and soul doing this activity as part of culture team in a way that we could at least give a good farewell to the person we leave. Pandemic has changed our lives immensely and a meeting like this where we catch up on good old days, memories, stories, experiences with gratitude filled hearts to the person leaving stays forever with us as a sweet memory. This equally holds good with the best wishes E Card or the last mail I drop on behalf of the entire team – these are memories that speak about our times with the company, colleagues, experiences etc that give us good vibes and which we can carry with us forever.

Even for a simple thank you gesture, I started an initiative called – ‘Special mention champs of the week’ where I allow the entire team to nominate or mention the name of those co-workers or team members who have helped them during the week, bailed them out during tough times, reduced their load of work or gave them advice or work tips that helped them immensely. I drop this mail on every Fridays (as Fridays are always considered as ‘happy days’ in the corporate world) with the list of all the champs (names of the colleagues), the nominators and the messages that the nominators share – it could be thank you notes, appreciations, cheer up messages or hailing of the champs. 

My entire aim for doing these initiatives was very simple – I only wanted to make people feel special and loved. With the pandemic situation most of us are affected immensely with lockdown, loss of human touch, loss of jobs, loss of loved ones, suicides, depression, unhappy selves, unhappy environment etc but moments like these where a few lines of happy words, appreciations and gratitude play a great role in boosting our moods, morale and bring a wind of change to our mindset. I realized with office life that it is not just about work and performances, but it is also valuing culture, lifting the spirit of a coworker, bonding with the team and spreading positivity that could add a little spark of magic/joy in the gloomy world during times of Covid.

Personally, every death or every goodbye has hit me hard and made me realize that we never grab an opportunity to thank people on time, we never treat our loved ones special every day, we take them for granted on a daily basis and express to them how special they are only on birthdays or anniversaries, we pamper them on these occasions or only when we want something out of them, we take them for granted. Only occasions like new year or festivals make us remember people and wish them, we never drop a text or message or call them to ask how they have been doing on any day. When we get news of someone’s death, is when our mind is filled with regrets, we fail to realize that this night could be our last, the bye they wave could be the last, the laughter we had could be our last as tomorrow may never come.

Some personal losses made me realize that life is too short and sometimes unfortunate. The recent passing away of a happy go lucky colleague of mine brought memories of times 4 years ago – when we sat in the same floor, he always came up to me, spoke to me smilingly, when I was upset, he cheered me up with movie dialogues, mimicry and that was his little efforts but now I realize the worth of it. I wish I had thanked him that time, I wish I had taken the chance to make him laugh by being in touch in the recent years and all my sentences are now of regrets and ‘I wish I had’.

Making time for others or giving them your love and care means a lot in today’s hush hush world, even if it means stopping by your place and saying a ‘Hello’. When I lost my cousin brother in an accident in Malaysia, I realized sometimes your passion can take your life. He was always full of life, focused on body building, keeping himself fit, keeping everyone around him happy and living life to the fullest. He always told mom to come over to Malaysia for a trip and he would take care of her that time, this dream was left incomplete. I remember his comment on my picture when I was on rotation to New York – “New York city girl, proud of you”. That meant so much to me. It is only words, those memories of laughter, smiles, hardships, support, care, love and concern that stays with us while their physical being leaves this earth.

With the loss of my class teacher, my close friend and her niece is still coping with her loss. My teacher was more than a mother to her. After having lost her own mother, my teacher – Miss Bernard was her everything. During the 40^th day prayer service, her niece had to read a eulogy and she has been so used to talking about Miss Bernard in the present, that all her sentences were in present tense. She later realized her fault and changed it all to past tense.

All of my teacher’s memories she shares with me, of how she used to pray for me, how she always spoke about me at her home, sharing my stories, how she believed in me when I was in school and gave me every opportunity to prove myself in academics and extra-curricular activities – hearing all such stories make me feel more guilty than happy or touched is the fact that I never thanked her for her trust in me, for her guidance, support, for her care during school times. I completed school during 2006-07 batch with Miss Bernard being my class teacher. With her passing away recently, I regret and feel guilty that I never hugged her and said, thank you. Never touched her feet and sought blessings, never prayed for her good health to remain and in spite of praying hard during her illness, she was snatched away from all of us. I was not able to attend her funeral due to lockdown, I made it for the 40^th day prayer service where I felt her presence everywhere in her home with her beautiful pictures displayed, the flowers and candles and beautiful lightings in the backdrop. I was teary eyed seeing it all, I wanted to hug her once and thank her for everything. I wanted to feel her love and warmth in the presence, I wanted to see her smile and see the pride in her eyes when she looked at me. Life can be all about regrets too.

While I share all of these experiences and incidences of mine, what I want to mainly highlight is how our body – our physical being is temporary and what stays with us or goes with us when we die, is our good deeds, like I mentioned before. When I quit my previous organization, I had everyone say such good things about me on my last day that I was very overwhelmed. Everyone had something or the other to thank me for – for being a supportive coworker, for smooth transitions, for the cultural activities that kept the firm united, for guiding the new joinees and for creating a healthy environment to work in. While I was immensely touched by the love and gratitude shown from juniors to managers, I only lived by the policy of living my life in such a way that every day you touch lives and change the world for the better.

It does not matter how long you have lived – it could be 20, 35 or even 75 or 90 but all that matters is how well you lived, what example you set to others, what good deeds you did, what you contributed to others while you lived the one life gifted to you by the Almighty. And it is all about the little things in life – you don’t have to do big things to impact someone’s life – you don’t have to be a Mahatma Gandhi or a Mother Theresa. You don’t have to go hunting for an orphanage or old age home to donate or do charity to have your good deeds planned. You feed a poor one day, teach values to your children, be kind to your old parents or gift shade to nature by planting trees – with all this is when true satisfaction is achieved and you spread goodness little by little like the sparkles spread from the magic wand 😊. I remember a close friend gifting me a beautiful frame with my best pictures that had this lovely quote – “Leave a little sparkle wherever you go” and I think with my previous organization, I did just that. I also had this quote that I always kept hung on my cubicle that always reminded me to do good, to be positive and how just by this awesomeness, the world will be a better place. Remember every event of your life could be short for the time being – learn to appreciate it, live those moments to the fullest because when they end, you will not be able to live them back. So take these as ‘Now or never’

There is a famous song in Bollywood whose stanza states – “When I die, someone will remember me. I will smile in someone’s tears. the mother will tell her young child – this is the way to live life” and that’s the simplest principle for anyone to follow. Being an ardent fan of Shahrukh Khan, his famous movie – Kal ho na ho (which means – tomorrow may or may never be), has these lines in the title song – “ Every moment life is changing – sometimes days are sunny, sometimes full of shade. Live every moment to the fullest. You never know, tomorrow may or may never be. The one who loves you the most, comes to your life with great difficulty. When you have someone like this – is the most beautiful feeling of life. Grab that hand , or else you never know when they would be no more”

So remember my friends, to value relationships, to live life to the fullest, to take that every step towards love and kindness, spread smiles, to let go of ego and fights that can never last, to inspire the young ones with our little good deeds, make others’ happy, don’t lose out on time to make someone feel special – because you never know , there may be no tomorrow.