I watch you(Smriti) I watch you, wary of your movements. I want to scream aloud, to stop you from doing what you are doing. To try and make you understand how it’s hurting me. But I don’t. Because I can’t. How can I stop you when this is what you actually want? You pass me but you don’t notice my eyes following your every movement. You no longer do. There is no hesitation in your movements as you swiftly pack away the things that meant so much to me. Not even a hint of grief as you pack away all the memories of our time together in the numerous cartons you brought home from the grocery shop next door. I want to ask you, I need to know why you are so bent on obliterating our time together as though nothing ever happened. How did I fail you? But I just watch, silently shedding the tears you no longer notice.

I am crying but there’s no tear in your eyes as you remove my picture from the table of your study. How could this be so easy for you? How was it that you weren’t tearing up inside as I was? You move methodically. Organized as always. Systematically placing my things in appropriate cartons. Books in one, clothes in another, my accessories in one and photographs in another. You don’t even spare my coffee mug, the same one you used to serve me my morning coffee.

You pause at the collage I had made for your last birthday. It contained the snapshots of our time together since the beginning. And you stop. You caress the pictures. And I see emotions well up in your eyes. For a moment I can feel the warmth of your caress, enveloped by the feelings you once claimed to have for me, but it doesn’t last. You drop it into the nearest carton. This being a mistake. The carton was the one for my clothes. I’m surprised the organizer in you didn’t notice. I’m sure that any moment you would notice and return to fix this with the same agitation with which you used to try fixing up the things you misplaced, which was so rare. It was so amusing, you getting all worked up at the stupidest of things. It made you all the more endearing.

The doorbell rings, making you pause. You’re about to call out my name but you stop. You go out to answer while I stay behind among the cartons that now contain my happy memories. You return with my mother behind. This surprises me. It has been months since I last went to her and she hasn’t visited since the day of the accident. I want to get up and hug her but I’m too numb to do anything but cry. She looks around, taking in the now half-empty apartment. Her eyes fly past me as though she doesn’t notice me there, as though I wasn’t there.

“I never noticed there was so much space in here,” she says with a nervous laugh, her sound is strained and the laughter doesn’t quite reach her eyes. “It used to be so crowded in here." She says after a long and awkward pause.

“She had a tendency to collect junk”, you reply after another minute of awkward silence, and then you both laugh, a hollow laughter.
You gesture towards the stack of cartons and say “take anything you want.”
Mom shakes her head in the negative. “Coming here was hard enough”, her voice is low, and sounding as if she were holding back her tears “I don’t think I have it in me to go through all of it.” And then she starts crying for real. You hug her and calm her down. But you don’t cry. Your tears have dried a long time ago. Now all I see in your eyes is an acceptance and that hurts more than your tears had.

It hurts to know that my own mother doesn’t want my junk. I want to scream but I’m paralyzed. Rooted to the same spot, still shedding my tears. I look around me. The apartment we had worked so hard to convert to home looked dead. All the time spent on decorating and redecorating, all the laughter, all the family gatherings, all of it had boiled down to nothing. Nothing but an empty hall and cold rooms.

“I’m going to donate all her things to the church.” You say after minutes of heavy silence.
“She would have liked that.’ Mom says after another pause.

I want to scream that it’s not what I wanted. I didn’t want to be forgotten so soon. I didn’t want my things to be disposed of to strangers as if they meant nothing. I didn't want to be sealed up in cartons and thrown out of my home. I wanted to stay with them. I wanted my things to mean something. I wanted to have my photographs on their mantelpiece and not in the attic gathering cobwebs. I wanted an assurance, that I had meant something to them.

She’s no longer crying and I wonder whether all her tears have dried as well. “I heard you were selling?” she asks tentative.
You nod, sighing deeply. “My therapist thinks I should change. And there are way too many memories of her here. It’s almost as if I can feel her near but I can’t reach out to her.”

You’re selling my home! And that too acting on some stranger’s advice, someone who had never known us, never known me. How could you let some other person, who dealt with psychopaths, take decisions affecting us? How could you let someone else have the power to influence what you feel for me? How could you let anybody convince you that I would have wanted to be replaced so soon? Yes I want you happy but I want to be a part of you too. I don’t want to be discarded from your memories. How could you break the bond we had being nurturing for years?

Mom pats you on your shoulder. “You’re doing the right thing. She would have wanted the same.”

I’m numb. There’s no point in trying to tell them what I would have wanted. They no longer see me; rather they no longer want to see me. So I stand back and watch them slowly pack away my life in boxes. There are no more tears for me to shed. I feel empty inside and tired. Really tired. I want to sleep but I can’t. I can only watch.

And that’s what I do as the moving vans take away all the contents of the apartment that had once been my home, my pride, my joy. And I watch as you leave, not glancing back even once. Leaving me behind in the debris, where I’ll stay forever now, remembering what had once been.

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