The tears of mothers, wives, and daughters

I was really, really young when I heard the word "posthumous."  My father used that word when referring to my aunt, who was a few-months old fetus when her father died.  In utero, a phrase that I learned much later.

I have never talked with this aunt about growing up fatherless.  Yes, there were father-figures in her life.  But, nobody that she called appa.  

I never talked to her mother either about losing her husband when she was a few months into her first and only pregnancy. 

In the old country, we never talked about such important things in life. 

But, we religious Hindus channeled them all into the grand epics.  Through those mythological characters--some of whom were/are divine to many--we shared the angst, pain, aches, sorrows, and everything unpleasant that life deals us.

In the Mahabharata, Parikshit is a posthumous child.  His father, Abhimanyu, was one of the many killed in the war at Kurukshetra. 

Kathika Nair gives voice to Abhimanyu's wife, Uttara, who was pregnant with Parikshit.

A young mother ready to give birth and her husband is killed.

There is plenty to be understood, and written, about the tears that mothers and daughters shed, and don't shed.  Yiyun Li writes about that in a moving personal essay.

"I have so little to keep, to hold, of you."  In the mythology and in real life.  Even today.