The mom , The dad and The baby who grew wings

In the last year or so, my relationship with my husband Sunil has seen so many ups and downs. During my pregnancy, my husband took extremely good care of me. He cooked every meal I ate after researching the internet to find out what I could eat or not eat for hours, he had an alarm system set up for all my vitamins, he woke me up every morning at 5:30 am and we went for our walk, he sat down on street benches with me when I got tired, he kept a record of my blood sugar levels ( though I di d not have gestational diabetes), he took my blood pressure every morning and most nights (though I didn't have high blood pressure), he went with me for every doctor appointment and he got to know more about my pregnancy than I could ever dream of knowing myself. Yes, he was a very involved dad. The three days Akul was with us he was there crying with me, holding our baby and trying to do little things for Akul that would make his last hours better. I fell head over heels in love with the man who loved his/my/our child so much. The day Akul passed away I felt closer to my husband than I had ever done. He held my hand all night and he even realized my milk was leaking and how I felt when that happened. He held on for about a week and then suddenly he crumbled. He stopped talking, stopped answering the phone, stopped doing everything. He created a big thick wall around himself and only I would be let into it every now and then. I dealt with all the phone calls and visitors. I dealt with my own grief and I worried about him immensely. I was also very lonely. For my own sanity, I went back to work and kept going through the motions of doing things all day long. I sat for endless hours at my laptop planning for my classes, and doing whatever anyone asked me to do at work. This was the time when Sunil really needed to talk about Akul and I did not have the capacity to do so. I was so tired, so drained that I had nothing left in me to give him or even to sit and mourn with him. We started moving apart. My husband felt that I had "moved on", I had forgotten Akul and was back to what I had been before I was pregnant. I, on the other hand, was struggling with my own grief, my husband's deteriorating health and the absolute silence in our house. After seven weeks schools closed for summer break. I remember being paranoid. I asked myself, "how will I live through summer?" "What will I do?" "Where does my life go from here?"

We planned a prayer session in our house a week after summer vacations started. My husband cooked dinner for almost 70 people single handedly. We were doing this with Akul in mind and he wanted everything to be just right for that one reason. That evening, when teh prayer started, I sat on the stairs that lead up to our bedroom and wept. The session went on for almost three hours and I just sat there and wept. My husbnad came and sat next to me and held my hand. He wept with me. We were back to that night in the hospital, the night after Akul passed away. We were heart broken, lost and hopeless. We just held hands and cried....a month later I started blogging.

Sunil, my husband, never writes any comments, but he is an ardent "Aajaa Akul" follower. He reads every blog I write over and over again, and cries more tears reading it than I do writing it. I know through this blog he gets to see Akul through my eyes and gets to spend time with Akul. He gets to know me as I really am - a lost heartbroken tortured mom who has lost everything when she lost Akul. If miraculously I do have another child, he/she will be child #2 because no one can take Akul's place in my heart. The blog helps us communicate at this most difficult time in our relationship.