The Abandoned

Gazing out of window had always been her favourite pastime. She would do it for hours as a child, waiting for her father to return... When they got her married, it was a routine to wait at the window late till night until her husband returned. She had now been waiting for her only child to return.. to see him for the last time before she died..

"Look at the mess you've created. Can't you even get up properly...?" She remembered her daughter in law yell at her when she spoiled her new bedsheet with her food stained hands while trying to get up.

"You are too aged for us to handle Ma.." her son had once said when she had unknowingly urinated in her bed.

She always dreamed to have a child as adorable as little Krishna. She remembered how happy she was when she brought her little Krishna to this world. How she cleaned his dirty diapers, how she nursed him back to health when ill...

"I am sorry Ma.." he held her wrinkled hands in his grip. "This may sound mean, but I don't think we can take care of you anymore." He said as they approached the old age home.
"I am sorry for the troubles I caused you Son, but why don't you understand me? I am weak..I am old. Isn't senility a second childhood? Hadn't you caused me troubles as a child?"
She argued, but in vain.

Gazing out of window hoping her Krishna would return someday, she was living her second childhood... the abandoned one though...

© Aditee Joshi