An ephemeral epiphany: Had grief become the new ghost?

Last week on this day I was lying in a hospital bed – having survived a minor stroke. A malevolent mélange of stress, personal and professional despairs, disappointments and being drained apparently led to that predicament.

Following my hospital admission, during the brief stay, I had to be on my own. 

For the most part of the stay, I was sedated. 

But eventually as they wore down, the woes that led me there, started weighing down again; sleeplessness sidled and snuck into the cabin of the hospital verdantly situated in Eskaton Garden. And with an intravenous cannula inserted in my left hand, I would traipse in a sad stupor.

Erstwhile sanctuaries of healing and hope, hospitals, paradoxically transform as night descends, birthing eerie tales that linger in the corridors of the human imagination. 

Once bustling with activity, they become the centre of many ghost stories - a tableau ripe for tales of terror. The hospital I was admitted to, too, had quite a few of such spiels of scare, and I have been terrified of those.

Yet the flicker of fluorescent lights that cast ethereal shadows, and the murmuring symphony of monsoon night merging with the consonance of the unknown didn't intrude while I was delirious in dolour.

Plodding the long, dim hallways stretching like veins did still feel like traversing realms betwixt the corporeal and the arcane, yet the horror haunting me wasn't some ghost but rather grief - lingering like spectres, imprinting upon the fabric of reality.

The sense of fear that often accompanied my imagination, spurred by tales of spectral visitations, had ebbed away like the receding tide amid the terribleness that plagued me. The labyrinthine passages that had once seemed daunting now beckoned with an invitation to explore the inner depths of my own thoughts. 

As I walked, I pondered the transient nature of life and the fragility of the human form – I thought of the one for whom my heart has been aching, the beautiful moments we spent together, the bitter moments that sprawled out of agitation and bitterness, regrets, rage, ambitions, aspirations and abilities against them all and more.  

Each was imbued with a poignant awareness about the preciousness of dear ones; something I had perhaps underestimated hitherto at the very moment.

In this peculiar communion with the hospital's nocturnal symphony, the despairs of grief, rather than any spectral phantoms, clouded the spook. 

The weight of uncertainty and the fragility of health converged into an orchestra of introspection. It was as if the very walls of the hospital were whispering stories of battles fought, victories won, and losses mourned. 

It was a tapestry of existence – woven with threads of suffering and triumph – that had been concealed by the daylight's hurried footsteps.

The green that echoed through the hospital spoke of the vitality that resides within each convalescent soul – something I feel drained of. 

My footsteps, tentative at first, had grown more resolute as I ventured deeper into contemplation.

As the night waned and the first tendrils of dawn began to paint the sky with hues of gold and rose, I stood on the balcony near my cabin – careful not to be seen while sauntering with shackles of sadness; in a way, it became a metaphor for the intricate journey that life, in all its facets, presents to us. 

But of course with a heart that was only heavier than before – weighed by another night of ephemeral epiphanies.

In the aftermath of the nocturnal sojourn, the fear of ghostly apparitions had indeed been supplanted, not by complacency, but by a profound recognition of the narratives that converge within the struggle of survival. 

It was an eloquent reminder about an indecorous aspect of existence - that despair, like steadfast companions, can forge an unbreakable bond with the human spirit, transforming the landscape of fear into a canvas of reflection, one with tones of romanticism, remorse and rage.

Touseful Islam. Sketch: TBS

The author is a journalist