When The Sky Is Blue…
It was Monday, Diwali, nine days after my mother had had an impactful heart attack. She had been immobile and weak for many days but was finally showing strong signs of progress. On this day, she was finally sitting up on her own, showing an active appetite, and engaging in laboured conversation. The trajectory was promising, so much so that an occupational therapist came to her room and assessed her cognitive state as excellent, and we began making plans to structure her rehabilitation at home.
Some hours later, I received a call from the worried cardiologist suggesting that my siblings and I be present at my mother’s bedside, as she had taken a sudden turn for the worse. At 4:14 AM the following morning, my perfect mother breathed her last.
I have often thought about something actor Patrick Stewart once said about the time his second parent died. He’d been in late middle age at the time, and yet his first thought was, “Who will look after me now?” We had now lost both of our fine parents, and all five of us had been cast untethered upon the unpredictable oceans of grim adulthood.
“Mother” is a child’s word for “God”. And I’m going to tell you a little something about our beloved perfect deity.
Sursati was born in May of 1939 in rural Guyana, the eldest daughter of Lily and Hari (who also had an existing daughter from a previous marriage). Her name was derived from Saraswati, the Hindu goddess of learning, music, and wisdom.
Theirs was a poor family, even by Guyanese standards. And yet Hari, a rice farmer like the other men in the village, was doing better every day. So much so, that one day he promised young Sursati that she would be sent to a better school soon, as she loved learning so much.
But fate had other plans. When she was 12 years old, Sursati’s father swooned and fell dead, perhaps by a stroke or any number of unnamed and uninvestigated ailments that befall the world’s poor. Lily, pregnant with their 7th child, was suddenly cast into single parenthood and a desperate new level of poverty. And Sursati was pulled from school to be a full time caregiver of her younger siblings, denied forevermore the formal education that she so craved.
The Hindi word for “older sister” is Didi, and that became her name and identity. For the rest of her life, Sursati would be known to everyone close to her, even her own children, as Didi.
During those struggling years, Didi struck up a friendship with a boy in the same village, who was 7 years her senior, along with his brothers and sisters. His mother, Rajkumarie, took a particular liking to her, and would often send her struggling family food and other wares. Her affection was so deep that before she, too, died suddenly and prematurely, she intoned to her son that she wanted him to marry Didi.
That young man, named Deonandan Deonarine, had his own issues with his father. And upon Rajkumarie’s death, Deonandan left the village to pursue another destiny. And in his absence, Didi’s fate was put into the hands of tradition and economic need. Against her desires, she was married off by her mother to another man in the village.
Soon after, Deonandan returned from his diversion and immediately asked for the young girl he had left behind. He was told her fate, and then asked, “Is it a legal marriage?” It was not. So he went to her and asked if she wanted to stay in that arranged illegal marriage, or would she like to marry him instead, legally and permanently?
Didi chose the latter. And with her new husband renaming himself Walter Deonandan, she and my father began their hemisphere-spanning adventure.
It was not a life devoid of recriminations. Despite her many hardships, my mother would suffer additional indignity, as some members of her new family would reproach her for her previous marriage, slinging such salty insults as, “second hand wife.”
I mention this because it underlines the essential quality of this magnificent woman. She never held grudges, never sought vengeance or the suffering of others, regardless of their actions. Instead, she always welcomed and embraced everyone. Decades later, every single person who offered her a bad word would sing her praises, as she had never become embittered against any one of them, and instead became their implacable allies and supporters.
Together, my parents began to build a poetic life, managing to construct a humble one-room house that was nevertheless their own. And in that house they bore five children.
As I was the last of those children, allow me to tell you a little something of the strength and resilience of the woman who bore me. Of my many siblings, only my sister and I were born in a hospital; the rest were delivered at home. When enormously pregnant with me, she was left alone on the hospital bed, unable to reach the call button.
And I was a breech birth, a dangerous situation indeed.
My mother gave birth to me all alone. And after I emerged, I began to roll off of the bed. She caught me with her feet. As she would be catching me for the rest of her life.
Decades later, in a tear-filled drunken exposition in New Delhi, fueled by the cheapest Indian whiskey, my father would explain to me how much of his good fortune was due to my mother’s centredness and discipline. In those early years, he worked as a waiter. My mother made sure that the family survived on his tips while his salary was put into savings. And as he progressed in his careers, the two of them saved enough money to launch their growing family to new pastures: North America.
At first, we lived in the rougher parts of New York City, both parents scraping together savings through factory work. In one of our early apartments, my siblings and I entertained ourselves by chasing and killing cockroaches who, of course, never diminished in number.
In another apartment, the building became condemned and the landlord stopped seeking rent. The residents took to throwing their uncollected garbage over the balcony, where it quickly accumulated into a small mountain of festering rubbish. Small armies of diminutive children were raised in this environment. Never forget, dear readers, the singular struggles of a particular underclass of immigrants.
And one of those homes went down in flames. I remember my parents scooping us all up in the middle of breakfast to run down the fire escape.
Throughout these harrowing immigrant challenges, my mother remained a centred rock, always keeping us fed, clothed, educated, and feeling safe.
Our move to Canada instigated our climb up the socioeconomic ladder. Nevertheless, my mother continued to toil in various factories, most commonly as a seamstress. In those years, she sacrificed her dexterity and much of her eyesight. The effects of this hard work would plague her well into old age.
She would leave the house before dawn and return after dark, never seeing the sun. And in those hours, she would find time to feed, protect, and nurture her very small children.
But despite how I’ve chosen to tell it thus far, hers is not a tale of suffering and hardship. Rather, it’s one of redemption and adventure.
At some point in her factory toil, my mother was elevated to the position of local union president. And she blossomed in this role. The union cultivated her leadership and activist acumen. She toured the province and met with labour movers. She found herself marching alongside the likes of famed activist Maude Barlow and sharing a stage with celebrity scientist David Suzuki.
I recall proudly and fondly how hard she worked on a speech she would give to assembled union brass on the stage of a downtown Toronto conference centre. The speech was about her climb from Third World rural poverty to burgeoning labour activist. It was both catharsis and apotheosis.
(Decades later, Maude Barlow would become a personal friend of mine. I glowed when I proudly told her how much my mother appreciated being near her.)
In her belly was lit a fire to know the world. And in subsequent years, the poor fatherless village girl travelled to a multitude of fascinating places, including India, Nepal, Europe, Guatemala, Cuba, Fiji, Japan, and New Zealand. She was always up for a foreign adventure, and enjoyed the company of everyone she met, finding mutuality with every conceivable culture.
My mother was cruelly denied the formal education she so craved. So she insisted that her children not be so deprived. All of us received post-secondary education and two of us became university professors. Upon her retirement, my mother even attended my sister’s political science lectures, developing a particular interest in the revolutionary actions of Che Guevara.
I’m proud that many years ago, my family endowed the Sursati & Walter Deonandan Academic Scholarship at the University of Toronto, because my parents so fervently believed that no child who wanted and qualified for a higher education should be denied one for financial reasons.
I could write forever about my mother and her joys and travails. But there’s really only one thing that I want you to know about her: she only ever wanted to help.
Her heart would bleed at the news of innocents suffering, especially children. She had a particular desire that everyone should support the charity Operation Smile, which offers surgery to children with facial deformities.
I have a particular memory of the day she read one of my books on applied philosophy, only this past year. She held it meaningfully in front of me and said, “This is the kind of book I like. You’re trying to help people.”
But it’s in one of our final conversations, only a few weeks ago, that she distilled for me the essence of her personal philosophy: never hold a grudge, always forgive, and always turn the other cheek.
My mother was the sweetest, best, and kindest person I have ever known. She always had a smile and compliment to say to everyone she met, everyday that she saw them. She never complained… about anything. She was always up for an adventure.
I know that every life comes to an end. And I have a grudging suspicion that things tend to unfold the way —and in the time— that the universe intended. So, I accept that the universe decreed that it was time for my mother to go… according to whatever great plan it continues to etch across our lives. But I would have liked for her to have stayed. Just a little while longer.
The Hindi word for your father’s mother is “Ajee.” Explaining to my 5-year old son that his Ajee is dead has been its own challenge. But he has decided that she lives on in the sky and is with us when the clouds part. As he says, “When the sky is blue, Ajee is looking at you.”
Sursati Deonandan
1939-2025
