Jolene

This morning I was sipping my coffee while going through a news app. It is a part of ritual to see what the world is upto while having coffee. I saw a news article "Legendary country singer and actress Dolly Parton dies at the age of 80". My heart sank. I had tears in my eyes. I felt as if I lost one of my own. I felt like I lost my own family member.

Then I thought to myself, "why am I feeling this way? Why am I feeling sad because of the death of a famous person? She was not related to me. I have never met her. I have never been to her shows. I did not even consider myself as her fan. Then why is her death affecting me so much?" The more I thought about her, sadder I become.

Then I realised maybe it was not about Dolly. Maybe it was about seeing the reality of life - death. Maybe I connected her death to the pain of losing my own family members. Suddenly the picture became clear to me. It took me back to my childhood.

I remembered being 4 years old. I had visited my uncle's home for Ganesh Chaturthi. All family members were there. I saw my grandaunts, granduncles, aunts, uncles, and many cousins. My dad told me to distribute sweets to everyone. One granduncle suggested a fun activity, "count how many people are here. Even count the little babies. Yoy must know how many family members you have". I did as I was instructed. I gave sweet to each one and made a mental note of the count. After I was done counting, I went back to granduncle and excitedly told him, "I counted 79. I counted everyone including myself and little babies". Granduncle gave out a mighty laugh and patted on my back, "see you have a big happy family. Long live our family". I added, "May Ganapati Bappa bless our happy family".

This had become a ritual every year on the day of Ganesh Chaturthi I would count the family members and tell the count to granduncle. Then I noticed a trend, every year the count was decreasing. The reason was obvious. Each year there would be deaths in the family. Each year I saw seeing less granduncle and grandaunts. One year the granduncle who started this tradition had departed this mortal world. The count that started at 79 was now down to 50 within a span of 8 years. It continued getting lower. The year I turned 17, I decided to stop this ritual. What started as a fun activity was now inducing pain. It was becoming painful to me to remember on a festive day whom we had lost in a span of one year.

Today when I saw the news of Dolly Parton's death, I remembered the deaths occurred in my family. I remembered how I had seen my "big happy family" has been reduced to a small group of people. The pain was not from Dolly Parton's death but it was from the memories of losing my own people.

Just like Dolly Parton's 'Jolene' I started feeling disheartened for losing my family (not man).