Big Bright Smiling Eyes

Big bright smiling eyes- Reminds me of my maid's very old husband who loved me as a child when I was about 3 years old, barely ready to take admission in school. The maid and her husband were like family to us because they were an old couple and didn't have any other family as their son left them long ago. Even after she left working at our place we still kept supporting them financially and emotionally so we never lost contact. My mother has always been a working woman and my father used to work abroad, they used to leave me with the old lady all day so the couple raised me as a child.

He always used to look at me with his big bright smiling eyes. One day excitedly, I showed him one of my passport-sized photos, It was me in a boy-cut maintaining a sheer confident yet innocent face for my school application form. He smiled and then slowly laughed with his eyes bigger and brighter than any other time before, while he looked at it and I knew he loved it but later on, I forgot to take it back from him.

 Maybe, I did ask him once to give me my photo back but he stayed silent so, I just thought I lost it somewhere else. Thank God! I had plenty of copies of the photo so I didn't face any loss. This gentleman frequently came to our house to pick his wife even though he could barely walk without a stick and was extremely loving, generous, and caring to me as well. He used to bring snacks for me and every day I played a silly game with him by moving round and round around him while he sat in his chair and I, with his walking stick in my hand pretended to be an old fellow like him and counted till ten while he calmly looked and smiled the same way at me all the time. 

One day, while joking around, his wife suddenly slipped his little secret and told me that he still has my photo with him. Every day, I kept on asking him to give back my photo to me but he just used to hand me his wallet and pointed at it every time and I thought maybe he wanted me to take any money I want and buy stuff for myself in return of the photo, just as my father used to hand me his whole wallet if I had to buy snacks or get my pocket money from him. It used to make me feel so annoyed that forget money, I never even took his wallet in my hand and ran away in anger every time he did so. But all he did was to look at me every time with the same bright smiling eyes. 

Years passed, he grew older and weaker so he couldn't come along with his wife. His wife whom I called Massi, although 65+ was still younger and physically better than him so she took care of him at home and after 6 years of working for us, she left just so she could take care of him. They were a loving old couple, literally 'goals' for many today even though they had no children who cared about them, visited them, or lived with them together in a house. I used to admire their love even as a child, it was my version of 'happily ever after'. Because of them, I knew how real-life perfect love stories looked like. Along with supporting them financially, we used to visit them at their small place (which was a barely one-roomed apartment) just to keep a check on them. 

12 years later, the old man was gravely ill and nearly on his death bed so we visited him at his place. He had lost most of his mental health till then so I felt like he didn't recognize me as he couldn't even recall my parents. Sometimes, he couldn't even recognize his wife too. I sat beside his bed and he kept looking at me but this time with his big wide-open eyes and a straight face. I knew he didn't remember me now but tears started shedding from my eyes as I recalled how kind he was to me.

 To my surprise, the very next moment suddenly he faintly spoke to me, and from what I barely understood, he had asked me to pass him his wallet from the cupboard right next to his bed as he was too feeble to move. I gave his wallet in his hand and again, he wanted to say something but couldn't so he barely pointed at his wallet which made me realize that maybe he wants me to open it and take some money out of it or something just like childhood. I felt a little touched, shy, and pitiful that he remembered me and was still doing his silly little bit, but this time he kept on asking me so, I thought to open it just to make him feel better. I opened his wallet and there it was! My photo from almost 12 years back. And there he was! Laughing at it with the same bright smiling eyes just like he did when he first saw that photo.

I laughed at my stupidity as for all my childhood, I thought he offered me money instead of giving me my photo back and cried at the same time because I couldn't realize how important it could be to someone to keep my photo in their wallet. As a teenager, most of us go through this insecurity of being worthless and so did I for a brief period at that particular time.

 We hear such things in a one-sided love story or watch in movies where at the end we get to see the lovers crying after seeing their photo in the wallets of their dead lovers who lost their lives in wars or accidents. Just a reminder of how much the people in the photo mattered to them and how they helped them to keep on going even in the toughest of times.

 I too mattered to someone not in the most romantic way but perhaps in the most lovable way one could imagine and how someone could look at me just the way he did, with the same bright smiling eyes. I tried to take out the photo but he stopped me with his hand and a frown on his face. I laughed and nodded a little and put the photo back in the wallet where I found it. I realized how much it might've meant to him. 

Only a day later, I got to know that the old gentleman has peacefully passed away. It was a very upsetting moment for me so I decided to visit his place again. There, I talked to Massi and she told me how many times he told her that he loved me and he saw me as his granddaughter whom he never met in his life because his son never came to visit him or let his father visit his family and grandkids. 

The more I heard, the more my heart broke and I realized how our existence can be so empowering for some people even when we are unaware of it. How romantic relationships are not the only relationships of love other than family, how friends can be made even with such a big age difference, how purity and affection can be found even in the seemingly oddest of interactions. And above all how we and 'us' humans protect our hearts from suffering more and more from the loss of people by seeing someone else as 'ours to love' and how it all helps in distributing love where it's needed the most.

 Love is not a myth, it is a blissful sight sometimes found among the most unexpected of places in the most unexpected of manner, where the only condition to keep seeing it often is 'to share it. It is not to be kept for the sight of ourselves only as this is the only way we can keep it going into the world forever. When a person opts for suicide, it's because we didn't play our small part of sharing our happiness with others who needed it, and hence, we stop our circle of love to let it reach someone who was supposed to get it, just like how the unlucky and ungrateful son of the old man stopped his poor daughter to receive the love she was supposed to get from the gentle old man (her grandfather) but the 'good thing' is how the old man didn't stop his gracious circle of love and counted me in it.

 Rest in peace to the one whose name I couldn't know but love still makes me feel worthy. All my prayers are with you and that's my way of counting you in my happiness.

~Bushra Shams

  (A true story)