Love has no boundaries and no end.
Living with the memory of love is something I learned from my father.
He never knew how to express it in words.
He never spoke at length about my mother.
He never explained what he went through.
He never showed what it felt like to be alone.
But I saw it—
in his gestures,
in his silences,
in the small ways he lived.
My eyes learned to recognize his love for her.

the bed

He stopped sleeping on the bed above.
He abandoned it and placed a separate bed on the floor.
For the past ten years, he slept there.
That was when I realized—
he couldn’t find comfort in his own bed without my mother.

the pen and the signature

Her sudden absence made him forget his own signature.
Just a few days after my mother’s demise,
when he needed to sign some papers,
he couldn’t do it.
He had completely forgotten how to sign.
We gave him rough papers to practise.
Even after many attempts,
he still couldn’t write it.

Grief didn’t just break his heart.
It shook his hands too.

saved my number as mom’s

Life moves on, but love doesn’t.
After my mother passed away, I began using her mobile number.
Many people changed the saved name to mine.
My father didn’t.
He saved it under her name — “Ruby.”

Once, in a moment of frustration,
I told him I wouldn’t use that phone anymore.
He tried to convince me to keep it.
I refused at first.
Then he said quietly,
“Whenever I get a call from this number,
I feel like your mother is calling me.
If you stop using it, I’ll miss her” .

At that moment, I understood
the purest form of love I had ever seen.

refused to marry again

As much as feelings are concerned, when we lose someone close, life forces us to be practical — to make decisions that align with the future. My dad struggled a lot as relatives poured out questions and advice about how he would manage life without a wife. Everyone cornered him to remarry again.
I don’t know how to address this — whether it was out of concern or simply ignoring his feelings. But he kept quiet. He never answered any of the questions. Slowly, relatives got tired of asking.

This is also a lesson I’ve learned from my dad — that silence can be a way of holding on, not giving up.
He stayed firm with his decision of not marrying again till his last breath.

At one point, I’ve seen him make a snappy statement:
“Ruby is my one and only wife. I will never marry again. Even if I do, that’s when all my three kids find their life partners. Until then, there’s no need for these talks.”

keeping her things

Things are the source of memories.
My dad always kept her things.
Once, I took my mom’s brush and toothpaste out of the bathroom, thinking it was time. He stopped me from throwing them away and told me to keep them where they usually were.
He kept all of her things with him — including her sarees — in the same wardrobe he shared.

fulfilling her wishes

At the time my mom passed away, we were about to look for an alliance for my sister. My mom had wished to find life partners for all three of us — outside of relatives, from unknown families.
So my dad kept her wish firm in his heart and found life partners for us outside of relatives. Though he had his own choices, he decided to honour my mom’s wishes.

I have seen him make some of the toughest decisions in life without my mom. The way he struggled alone, sat in silence, and pondered over how to get his children married and settled — just like my mom desired.

Even now, when I write this, I can’t find the right words to describe what my dad went through — the struggles he faced, even from his own relatives, and how he had to satisfy every single relationship around him.
I admired him, adored him, and felt inspired in every way.

Not just a dad or a good husband,
but a real man of excellence.