Recently, my uncle Nisar Aryne from Jordan was visiting his son in Connecticut. I called him and told him that I would be visiting my mother Akhtar, his elder sister, over the weekend, and he should come along to be with her. He agreed and we got to Philly and settled into my sister Sabah’s cozy house, where my mother stays. She had a stroke 10 years ago, and is getting weaker in her 80’s as one would expect. However, she is able to walk with her walker, talk on the phone and in person with slight hearing issues only and eat by herself, although we are lucky to have nurses for her for most mealtimes.
As I sat with both of them over breakfast, lunch and dinner, I noticed that there was barely any conversation. At first, I got worried and started falling into a facilitator role – a bad habit from my corporate roles. I started conversations hoping one of them would pick up on it and take it forward! But it didn’t work. So we ate meals together, watched TV together, had tea and snacks, and the hours ticked by until we had to return. In between, nurses would come to help my mother in the morning, afternoon and evening, and even their talk was transactional, e.g. what do you want with your tea? Do you want ice cream? And frankly, the only comment I remember my mother making at one point was: “Nisar, why don’t you put a blanket over your legs? You might get cold”.
I started thinking about my observations and more importantly about my discomfort with silence. Here were a brother and sister seeing each other after many years, and my expectation was that there would be tons of conversation, catching up on each others’ lives, asking questions, reminiscing about their younger lives, about past events, etc.! But for them just sitting and watching TV together, sipping tea or eating a meal, was enough catching up. I began to appreciate the quiet joy that is just there in that silence. And slowly I relaxed into it myself. I started to release all the shoulds I had in my mind about family reunions or gatherings.
I had also brought an Amazon stick so that I could show my mother different programs beyond cable TV, which she watches all day from her armchair. And I would put on a Pakistani song on U-tube, or a drama about the Ottoman empire, or a show about the history of Indian cooking (Raja Rasoi) on Netflix. I did not ask her what she wanted to see, but just kept trying different things. And again I picked up on a pleasure she was feeling – no words again- just a slightly happy and more interested expression on her face as she saw our culture reflected on film in many different ways. I was thrilled and insisted on leaving the stick for her to enjoy, although we would have a challenge in her using the complicated remotes!
My sister called a week later and told me how my mother is enjoying the new variety of programming, and calls her to ask her to put on something or pause it so she can resume later. And I am thrilled to know that her soul was touched and for me to rediscover a new form of communications or non-communications, totally foreign to our social media world. I made a promise to myself to check Facebook and other media less frequently than I do now. It has not worked yet, the automatic reflex keeps going, but I am hoping I can get better at it. Now if only I could talk less at social parties, which I attend too many of!!!!
Oddly enough, today my daughter Sheema called and shared that at Thanksgiving she felt that she could not communicate with my mother, as if there was a barrier. She had this wonderful idea about creating a collage for my mother of her own life through the years. She thought it would be meaningful and would touch her. And I shared my observations with her about recent events. And I was happy that both of us in our own way were learning, or un-learning, our habitual ways of communicating, and creating new ways of connecting and touching souls.
Mino Farooq Akhtar
December 12, 2016
www.sufidialogue.com
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