Coping with inner silence

My mother ,confined to her room mostly,keeps inquiring from the inner space , at regular intervals whether I have gone to the office or whether I have come for the lunch or whether I have come back from office.My wife gets understandably annoyed having to reply to her from the living room from time to time.Why she does this is at first difficult to understand .Today I have understood her .Suddenly it has occurred to me that when time hangs heavily on her she has found her own way of marking time .In the twilight years a person loses a sense of time and becomes disoriented because he is no longer in the mainstream. You not only do not participate in the drama of life but lose your spectator status as well . The world goes on without you and is not even aware of your existence.

My wife says my mother raises her voice even when the listener is close by .Where is the need to shout when somebody is within a close range, she asks.It has again occurred to me why such a thing happens with my mother all the time.She seems to be trying to break the inner stillness within her , the lack of steady hum in her consciousness .The silence is indeed terrifying and it is only by raising the pitch that one could break the silence.

The painting by Edward Munch expresses beautifully a similar kind of loneliness prompting the individual to scream trying to make himself heard .

The scream is a shout from the existential angst of humankind . There is fire and water behind and you have already crossed the large part of the bridge .The fire is not what you are confronted with as it is behind you but the terror of your future at the end of the bridge .It is the hopelessness of the situation ,the meaninglessness of a landscape which you are trying to relate to and become part of but suddenly realize the futility of it. No matter how much you shout ,you are not heard and your scream merely echoes in the vast wild wastes of your existence .