Words of Remembrance: Memorial Service for Mum

Kanta Mehta (April 25, 1938 – October 11, 2018)

Delivered on Monday, November 19, 2018, at Manning Memorial Chapel, Acadia University

If I had to summarize my mum’s life in one sentence, it would be that she managed to find peace
and solace after a lifetime of suffering.
To understand my mum and her life, we need to consider the context in which she was born. She
was born in 1938. On the horizon of her youth were three major historical events that would
impact her life and shape the person she would become:
1) World War 2
2) India gaining independence from England, and
3) India separating into India and Pakistan
My mum was born in what is now Pakistan. When she was a young child, her father asked her to
look out the window and tell him whether the next door neighbour was going to work. My mother
looked out the window and told him that he was going to work. Based on the information that my
mother had given him, my grandfather decided that he too would go to work.
Sadly, he never made it to his workplace. Instead, he was stoned to death in front of his own home
and the rest of the family had to flee the country, wearing only the clothes that they had on their
body.
After this event, my grandmother blamed my mother for the death of my grandfather and went
out of her way to ensure that my mother would suffer.
During my mother’s childhood, my grandmother made her do the worst of the household chores. I
remember my mum telling me how her hands often bled because of the work she was doing. My
grandmother would also wake up my mum in the middle of the night and beat her while everyone
else was sleeping.
When my mum was a young adult, she had to give all of the money she earned to my
grandmother. That money was used to fund the dowry that was used for her oldest sister’s
wedding. Because there was little money left over for my mum’s wedding, she was forced to marry
my father.
One condition that my father demanded for their marriage was that my mother work instead of
being a housewife. He was fine with her working until she started to earn more money than him.
At that point, he became insecure and jealous, and would often berate her accomplishments.
When he committed suicide in 1991, he left her a note saying that his death was her fault.
When I look back on my mum’s life now, I understand why it was impossible for her to come to
terms with her past. I think that she valued and respected the role of the traditional family in
society. As well, I know in my heart that her love for both my older brother and me was genuine
and sincere. But I believe that the way that she was treated during her formative years changed
her perceptions of the world and the people in it when it came to the context of family, and that it
would been impossible for her to find meaning in her life simply by raising my brother and me.
Instead, her sense of fulfilment, satisfaction, and meaning came from her work – which I think was
her calling. Shortly after I was born, my mum discovered that she had a knack for computer
programming and started taking every course that she could on the topic. She did this while
working full time, keeping up with my father’s demands, and raising my brother and me.
Eventually, her computer skills became so good that she could quickly get employment at any
company she wanted. In fact, she managed to defy the conventions of job searching and got
interviews when all she sent in was her resume, but without a cover letter. And when she was
interviewed, the employers were always so impressed that she would quickly get a call back saying
that she was hired.
Over time, she progressed from being a computer programmer to becoming a senior systems
analyst, whose role is to design and implement a computer system for a company or government.
She clearly got fulfilment and satisfaction from her job and was both a diligent and conscientious
worker. After I moved out of the home to start graduate school in 1994, whenever I called my
mum on the phone, she almost always told me about how she had brought her work home with
her and would be staying up until midnight to get the job done. She did this because she took pride
in her work and wanted to do the best job possible for her employer.
Her skill set and strong work ethic played a role in my mum getting employment in prestigious
workplaces, which included CN Rail, Ontario’s Ministry of Revenue, the Toronto Transit
Commission, the CIBC, and the Bank of Montreal – with the Bank of Montreal being the last job she
had before retiring in 2001 or 2002.
When I look back on my mum’s life, I think that retiring from work wasn’t right for her. Without her
work to occupy her mind, she spent much of her time thinking about her past and revisiting the
worst moments of her life.
One regret I have about her life is that I wish she had taken time to pursue the hobbies that she
enjoyed. When I was a child, she used to paint and was a talented artist. I’ve brought some of her
works tonight and am displaying them downstairs for anyone who wants to see them after the
service. When I was going through her belongings, it saddened me to see the paint sets and
canvasses that she bought for herself but seldom used.
I think that had my mother pursued some of the passions that she had from her youth, she might
have had a healthier and happier retirement.

In terms of her health, she had her first heart attack in February 2003; this happened when I was
living in Winnipeg and she was living in Toronto. I remember getting a phone call from her in the
early morning on a Sunday roughly one week after I had my interview at Acadia. I picked up the
phone and she immediately told that
 a) she was expecting to die
b) that she was calling me to let me know where her will was,
c) and what I needed to do to straighten out her affairs
I remember having to shout at her and tell her to be quiet; in fact, this was the one and only time I
would have dared to tell my mother to “shut up”. I tried to get her to call 911, but she refused to
do so because she didn’t want to wake up the neighbors or advertise to the neighborhood that she
was away from the home because someone might vandalize her home while she was in the
hospital. It took me a while to do it, but I finally convinced her to call a cab and to get outside the
home. In the evening, I was able to talk to her in the hospital, when she told me that she had a
serious heart attack. When I came to visit, she told me that I was making a big fuss over nothing.
Her next heart attack was in 2008. She seemed rather nonchalant about it and phoned me to let
me know it happened, and that she would be mad at me if I visited.
She then had a stroke in February 2012. When that happened, she asked me to visit her right away
– which I did. Unlike the heart attacks, the stroke really shook her up. I think she could handle a
medical condition that affected her body, but not one that would affect her mind or ability to think
straight.
After the stroke, the social workers at Sunnybrook Hospital in Toronto recommended that she
move to the Valley to be close to me. At first, she was very keen about the move. However, after
she moved here, she found out that a down side about Wolfville is that there are no nice homes in
the downtown core. Because she couldn’t live in the downtown region, she lost some of her
independence and she sometimes blamed me for that. I also noticed that we were spending more
and more time in our conversations talking about her past.
Over time, my mum and I slowly started to drift apart. When I look back on the period between
2013 and 2018, I notice how I slowly reduced the number of times I called or came to visit. And
when I did visit, the length of my visits got progressively shorter.
In July 2017, I started to speak out against what I believe to be wrong in our universities and that
led to complications in both my personal and professional lives. Her reaction to what I was doing
was mixed: Sometimes, she told me that she was proud of me for standing up what I think it right,
but at other times told me that I had only myself to blame for opening my big mouth.
In early July of this year, she was taken to the hospital because she had a serious case of racing
heart rate and irregular heart rhythm. I am grateful to her neighbour Dola, who noticed that
something was wrong and called 911. After the incident, I swore to myself that I would spend more
time with my mum and make the most of the moments that we had together. But I didn’t.
Before her third heart attack on October 11, I visited my mum on Thanksgiving (which was on
Monday, October 8). At the time, she had a friend visiting and she wanted me to come over
because he was driving her up a wall. When I came over, we ended up having a nice meal together.
While I’ll admit that her friend was annoying, I am grateful to him because he gave each of us a
fine china cup – and that was what we used for what would be our last cup of tea together. We
also had a chance to go for a walk together and had a nice heart to heart chat that evening.
Three days later (Thursday, October 11), I called my mother in the late morning and we talked
about how she was relieved that her friend had left the previous day. At 4 pm, I received a phone
call from her home. When I picked up, a paramedic told me to get to the Valley Regional Hospital
right away.
When I arrived at the hospital, the doctor told me that she was a having a heart attack and she
needed to be transported to the QE2 because the Valley Regional didn’t have the facilities to treat
her. I asked him how serious was her heart attack and he told me that it was a 3 on a scale of 0 to
10. While he thought that the heart attack was mild, he also said he was concerned because of her
age and because of her history of heart attacks in the past.
My mum and I, though, were both convinced that she would be fine. Before she was transported
to the QE2, my mum gave the staff a DNR (Do Not Resuscitate) instruction and I remember
commenting to her to not have to worry about that. The last thing I said to her was that I was going
to stop at her place to pick out a nice outfit for when she left the QE2 and that I would see her in
Halifax. The last thing she said to me was that she was confident that everything would work out
for the best with my job at Acadia.
When I got to the QE2, I found out that she had a massive heart attack 15 minutes away from the
hospital. Because she had given a DNR instruction, there was nothing that the paramedics could do
and she ended up passing away.
Now that it’s been a little over a month since my mum’s passing, I’ve noticed that I still have
regrets but that the intensity of those regrets gets smaller with each day. As well, I have been able
to find meaning in her passing, which has made a situation that seems senseless and unfair far
more bearable. Finally, I have come to realize that some of my strengths come from my mum. I’ll
start by talking about my regrets.
One regret that I have is that I was planning on spending the Christmas holiday learning how to
cook some traditional family dishes that only she knew how to cook. Another is that I wanted to
write down the details of our family history. These opportunities are now forever lost like tears in
rain.
I also wish I had spent more time with her while she was around and that I had handled some of
our conversations differently. However, I also realize that she was in a place of deep pain and that
there was little I could do to reach her – much less help her.
But, in a strange way, I think that my distancing of myself from her did do her some good. After she
passed away, some of her neighbours from her building told me that she had started to come out
of her shell and socialize, and that she was very pleasant to talk to. That was a nice surprise
because I remember her as keeping to herself and being sad about her past.
When I talked to her close friends, they told me that my mum was at peace with her life and felt
that she was ready to leave because she had accomplished all that she had set out to do. They also
told me that she was concerned about me – in part because I was speaking out at work, but mostly
because she felt that I married someone who was wrong for me. This was also a sentiment that she
expressed to me when she said “It pains me to see your heart so sad and heavy, especially when
this is a time that you should be experiencing marital bliss”. At the time, I told her marriages
always start off rocky but then get better with time and that it was my fault that I was having
problems with my marriage. But it was clear from her body language that she didn’t believe me. In
what turned out to be a blessing in disguise, my mum’s passing allowed for a chain of events to
occur in which I finally decided to end my marriage on October 30, four months after we got
married.
I see this as a blessing in disguise because I caught my mistake relatively early and didn’t spend
years in a marriage in which neither my wife nor I were happy. More important is that I think this
would give my mum peace of mind, but without having to experience the pain and heartache of
watching me go through a difficult divorce.
When I look back on my life and the role of my mum in it, I realize that I’ve spent so much energy
in my life trying to be “my own person” who was not like either of my parents that I didn’t realize
that some of my strengths come from my mum.
When I think about how I pursued my teaching with passion when I realized that teaching was my
calling, that quality is consistent with how my mum pursued her career with passion. Although I’ll
never be as hard or diligent a worker as my mum, any work ethic that I have has come from her.
Depending on who you ask, people will often describe me as either determined or stubborn. I think
that these qualities also come from my mum, as well as the historical context in which she was
raised. One message that resonates from World War 2 and India’s independence from Britain is
that evil persisted not because the force of evil was strong, but because the good people did
nothing. Under difficult circumstances, doing what is right comes with heavy short-term costs
compared to doing what is easy. However, the hope always is that a greater good is served and
that explains my actions over the past 1.5 years.
I started off this remembrance by saying that my mum’s life is best summarized as a journey in
which she finally experienced peace and solace after a lifetime of suffering. But I think it’s
important that we not lose sign of the fact we are all human beings and that we need each other. I
think that one way we can honour my mum’s memory is to genuinely love ourselves and the
people around us.
For this reason, the piece that I chose for the second music reflection is John Mellencamp’s “Hand
to Hold On To”. This song resonated with me in my youth but that I think is still relevant to
everyone here today. When the service is over, I hope that I’ll have a chance to hear your stories
about my mum at the reception or whenever you happen to see me in town.
If there is anyone who would like to come up and say anything, I invite them to do so.