There I was standing in line, patiently waiting to pay my respects to the deceased husband of a teacher-friend and I couldn't stop wondering, "Am I at a wake or a social gathering?" There were no grim, tearful faces around. People were chatting, laughing and greeting each other with hugs and smiles. Even my friend -- a wonderful, funny lady -- greeted everybody with a warm hug and a bright smile. The painful loss of her husband had not robbed her of her greatest gift: the ability to laugh and make others laugh. Janet is easily the funniest lady I have ever met. She would come dressed to school sometimes as a clown, sometimes as Mother Goose and if she was doing a lesson on pilgrims, she came dressed like one! That was Janet, outrageous, totally uninhibited and always ready for a hearty laugh. Everybody in the school looked forward to lunchtime with Janet because pesky kids, corrections, lesson plans were all forgotten when she regaled all with her bawdy jokes and perfect impersonations. Both kids and adults loved her. She was what a lot of people, including me, secretly aspired to be -- a laugh-a-minute storehouse. Janet's husband had died suddenly in his sleep at the relatively young age of 54. At the funeral home, she had erected a huge board, with pictures of her late husband, capturing family and fun-filled moments of their obviously very happy marriage. They were pictures, which celebrated life with exuberance and joy. There was even one of him holding onto a pair of huge plastic breasts, with the caption, "Always the boob man!" Outrageous? Definitely. Disrespectful? Not if you know Janet. True, there were times when she did lose her composure, especially when a close friend or relative reached to embrace her. But she almost always quickly wiped away the tears and replaced it with her dazzling smile. Impeccable in a black suit and smart scarf, she was not the traditional weeping widow. She was the very picture of a woman who had accepted the finality of her husband's death with dignified sorrow and was ready to move on with her life. When it was my turn to greet her, she said, "I am so grateful we had 31 great years together. My life will go on. It will never be the same, but it will go on. I am so fortunate, look at all the friends and loved ones I have." Knowing that I always cracked up at her funny stories, she then proceeded to tell me the story of how her husband once tried to catch a rat with a flyswatter! Everybody standing around erupted with laughter. So did Janet. "I won't have any more funny stories to tell about him during lunchtime," she said softly, smiling sadly. I came home that evening, for the first time not depressed but uplifted after seeing a dead person. Every time I had attended a funeral in India I always came away feeling miserable. The wailing, flailing and emotions at the scene would leave me overwhelmed and depressed for days. It was like with every death, at least a dozen more people died emotionally. And of course, if you did not shed a bucket of tears, it meant you were stonehearted and felt no grief. I still remember the funeral of a one year-old baby who had died very suddenly. The mother was in a state of shock and couldn't shed a tear, while the father beat his chest and hollered. The relatives looked on approvingly at the father while the poor mother was the butt of some bitchy whispers. A couple of weeks later I received a beautiful letter from Janet thanking me for the "gift of your presence and kind words of support". In it she said, "A thoughtful act or a kind word may pass in a moment, but the warmth and care behind it stay in our hearts forever." I knew copies of the same letter would have gone to all the people who had attended the wake and funeral, but that did not detract from it its sincerity. It was a letter I would treasure, read and re-read, a letter that will always remind me of Janet during the wake and her spirit amidst death and life. I met Janet at a teachers meeting recently. Though she reached out to everybody with her characteristic warmth, I couldn't help but notice that her eyes were filled with sadness. For the first time, Janet's smiles did not reach her eyes. She insisted that she was "doing fine" and was grateful for her job (she was back to work one week after her husband died) that kept her busy and for the fact that her husband had taken care of all financial matters. But I knew that for this brave woman, every day was a struggle. Behind that façade of a "normal" life, Janet was grieving as much, maybe even more than the women who let it all hang out. Chicago-based Shanthi Shankarkumar promises to return with more diaries. Illustration: Uttam Ghosh Tell us what you think of this diary
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