Reports of debris, suspected to be from missing Malaysian Airlines flight MH370, found in the last few weeks have raised expectations and aggravated despair in quick succession for the families and friends of the victims. It is over 500 days now that we have been struggling to come to terms with the confusion and loss. Many of the affected families affected have spoken out with much feeling about the anticipation and dread they continue to experience as the story develops with no end in sight.

From my viewpoint, the media’s scramble for reactions, while fleetingly annoying and sometimes amusing, nevertheless raised some awkward but important questions. Awkward because there were times when too much was going on within myself to encapsulate in a two minute sound-byte, and other times when all that one felt was a reemergence of fatigue, of emptiness – hard to fathom and harder still to communicate.

Does the debris, if confirmed to be from MH370, mean the beginning of a process of closure? Will this mean that one can finally ‘move on’?

I don’t have a cogent answer yet. Maybe these are false questions. After all, though life as one knew it has been rudely disrupted, neither the daily demands of existence have diminished, nor have I been so disabled as to not respond to them.

So what does ‘closure’ mean to me? What remains ‘open’ that needs to be ‘closed’? What, if anything, is coming in the way of this ‘closure’? Is it about giving up? Giving up what?

Let me rewind a bit. Going back in time is often a convenient way to not deal with the questions head on. One can bring in a lot of context, meandering and peripheral fluff – as a way to obscure, or exhaust oneself of all blind alleys. I have also found it helpful sometimes to discover a fresh perspective.

Death as a phenomenon is not new. I lost my father when I was 17. I lost a friend in the Bay of Bengal soon after. Since then, over the years I have lost other friends and family. I am quite aware as are countless others that death is an inevitable in the cycle of life, a point of no return, something that reminds us of the gift of life. In the initial weeks after Mar 8th 2014, it was possible to tell myself that we generally don’t choose our time and manner of passing. While there was deep disturbance about a possible watery end and the violence of it all, the stoic pragmatist in me was willing to look ahead rather than brood.

The boat tragedy in Korea, where hundreds of children lost their lives due to criminal recklessness of a ship’s crew, the abductions of hundreds of girls in Nigeria, the savagery in the Syrian war theatre, and other such tragedies in 2014 suggested that there is huge suffering, death and destruction all round on a large scale. It made my personal loss appear commonplace, and bemoaning it a disproportionate response.

As days went by, I concluded that MH370’s journey ended in unexpected fashion for reasons unknown, that it will be located in due course with the might of nations and technology. I railed against hope and miracles, calling them tricksters that distracted one from dealing with the grim realities of existence.

What was devastating was a realisation that the fate of MH370 was sealed by negligence or incompetence, or a combination of both, and the very real possibility of a cover-up. I had all along believed in the sanctity of life, in the goodness of people and institutions, and in the outcomes that flow from the power of good intentions. But what I thought was a matter of science and craft seemed mired in the politicsof self-preservation and cunning. The oft-expressed pious intentions of the authorities seemed no more than a smokescreen to persist with disgraceful insensitivity, opaqueness and falsehoods. My faith in fairness and justice as an essential cornerstone of an ordered world was severely eroded. It was difficult to believe the official line. There has always been a nagging suspicion that there is more to be revealed that what is publicly known, that there are people who know more but have chosen to prefer silence or deceit. This has made it impossible to put one’s faith in the official search efforts and believe that the effort is well-meaning and well-directed.

The anger brought on by this does no good to the process of renewing a life of domesticity, of earning a livelihood, keeping the home warm and welcoming, and focusing my attention on the present and future. The swirling theories, hypotheses, speculations and conjectures spawned in an information void created by the airline, the manufacturers, the investigators, and the concerned governments leaves me with no means to distinguish fact from opinion, and therefore no basis to build a narrative of what happened.

So, why is it important to know what really happened? First, to establish the truth. I find this inextricably linked to my ability to restore my faith one more time. Second, to reaffirm that the public matters, and that convenient and self-serving versions of events that insult the intelligence of people will not be allowed to prevail. Third, to fix accountability and to deliver justice. Justice, as I see it, is not vengeful but a life-affirming process that emphasises interdependence, and demanding standards of role performance on which our society can depend. This too is vital for faith. Lastly, to underline that lives matter and that their end does not mean we stop looking for what caused it or how it might be prevented in future.

One may never know what really happened. That is a possibility. But I believe that there is much that the authorities can do to restore public faith, regain lost credibility and possibly even receive forgiveness. In its calculated denial, one perceives an attack on humanity. In the process, I risk the loss of some part of my own humanity.

So a flaperon here, a piece of debris there does little to douse my anger, restore my faith and free me from the entanglements of theories and speculations.

I have said earlier that I am not one to hang on to hope. I believe that it is all over. I had softened this harsh conclusion in the early months by saying that with the passage of time, the probability of my wife coming back approaches zero. This stance may make other affected families unhappy, even angry. Perhaps some members of my own family too would frown on my saying this. They may feel I have betrayed them or in some way left the lost souls in the lurch.

It has not been easy to come to this position. As late as September last year, I did have a fleeting moment when I thought I would receive a telephone call from her. The phone did ring. It threw me into a tizzy. Of course, it wasn’t her. It just told me that the wish for her to return hadn’t been extinguished. This May, I woke up middle of the night from a vivid dream where I saw her walking on a sea shore. It was a long dream, enough to keep me awake for the rest of the night. But that is all there is: dreams and fantasies.

The experience of the last 500+ days has left scars. I didn’t see them initially while I was still in an adrenaline bubble. I am messed up in many ways – physically, emotionally and in terms of my capacity to attend to things. I have come to recognize them more clearly in the last few months. There were months last year when I felt an invisible force restrain me from doing things; the mind was willing the body was not. That has changed. I find myself more engaged in work, in keeping track of things to be done and in reaching out to people. So there is a perceptible shift, albeit gradual.

I still have some distance to go in working out a path. I know I am resilient. All people are, no matter how badly battered and bruised they may be. The gift of life I have is as real as the weight of loss. I search for something that will re-ignite my interest, re-energise me, to feel the life-force.

On many lonely evenings I have wondered about the people in my life. It has been hard to give up the notion that I am in some way entitled to indulgence, to be accompanied every step along the way to a settlement by the largest number, to deem my struggles as theirs. Some have done so. I have sensed in others’ silence a message that I should move on. That perhaps in engaging, a wound festers. That one must find solace and make one’s peace in solitude. I accept.

I had said in March this year that closure is a choice. I make that choice. By this I mean that my wish for a future is not a hostage of nostalgia or some fantasy of a return to the old days.

This does not mean that my interest in pursuing the truth of MH370 is diminished or jettisoned: that has its own logic.

Image from express.co.uk.

This post originally appeared on my Facebook page.