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May-10-2018 23:26printcomments

One Year Passes-By, And The Vacuum Continues To Grow!

Chandrakala Ratnayake (nee Senanayake): One Year Remembrance
(May 12th 2017 – May 12th 2018)

Chandrakala Ratnayake
Chandrakala Ratnayake (nee Senanayake): One Year Remembrance
(May 12th 2017 – May 12th 2018)

(LOS ANGELES) - Time shall heal they say; but to me, time has only been intensifying the aching wound of my beloved mother’s absence in this world.

She was the very special person who brought light into my life, from the day I was born, not only in times of joy, but in times of deep sorrow and struggle.

Even though she has been gone throughout one whole year, which I felt like a lifetime, I still feel her ray of light falling on me from heaven above. But, I admit with pain that the challenging moments have been appalling without Ammi’s presence. And, the dainty moments of joy have been dull in her absenteeism, throughout the year that passed-by.

My beloved mother departed this world, on May 12th 2017, after courageously fighting ailment that was discovered, treated for, and persisted for three short-lived months, leaving my father and I only the consolation that her duration of anguish was minimal.

The robust, courageous, good-looking and strong-willed lady in my mother did bear, void of complaint; the complications involved with an ailment of the nature. She set an example by not giving-up until her very last breath, in the Kurunegala hospital’s coronary care unit, to which she was transferred from the oncology unit.

Out of the three months we all drained due to the varying magnitudes of her illness, my memory holds on tight with desolation, to the last nine hours that my mother fought for dear life, gasping. “Life breaks everyone, but some people heal stronger in the breaks,” they say, and my mother was one of those who healed stronger in the breaks.

My mother lived a complete and dynamic life. Amongst seven siblings of the Senanayake family from Kurunegala, she was the fourth. Having obtained her education from Maliyadeva Girls’ College in Kurunegala, she joined the Hayleys Group back in the 1960’s, where she served for nine years.

While in school and in later years she played basketball under the guidance of All-India Basketball Coach Mr. P. Chelladurai, and also represented St. Anne’s College, Kurunegala in a trainee camp held in St. Anthony’s College Courts in Katugastota back in the 1960’s.

After tying the knot with my father Ananda Ratnayake in 1973, she pursued a career at Marhaba Travels in Sharjah, U.A.E. where she served for several years before returning to Sri Lanka. Being the family-oriented woman, later in her life, she, along with my father lived with me, in California U.S.A. and in Sri Lanka until her passing.

The grief of my mother’s demise has been continuously suffocating my soul throughout the past year, and choking me from time to time, letting the tears fall silently down my cheeks, every single day, not for the world to perceive.

This agony of demise wraps my heart like an anaconda crushing bones of its prey. Death has left heartache in me that no one can heal. People say that time shall heal, but in reality, time apparently does not heal anything.

Time, just has taught me how to live with the pain, and face this riddle called life, in the absence of my mother’s warmth and care, and of course without hearing her voice. Yet, I am aware that Ammi; you are watching over me and Appachchi, from somewhere over the rainbow. You are my Mona Liza and you will always be beautiful, in my eyes!

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