In the middle of my 10th prep exams, my grandmother died of cancer in the room next to mine. It was coming all along. I knew it was going to happen one day or the other but it still felled me in one stroke. I thought I had prepped myself for it. But I was wrong, because I spent the entire night awake before my math exam, an unspoken unknown vigil by me for her. I didn’t tell anyone about it. I went on with my life after that.
I didn’t know what to do with myself , how to act, how to feel. Was my grief lesser than my mother’s because I showed it less? Did I grieve the wrong way? Was I disrespecting her, her memory by not shedding tears. I’m still not sure. But I know even more about grief now, as the human condition is to live life and to live life, one must lose things one loves. That, I know, is grief. Its love that has nothing to go to.
“Grief is love’s souvenir. It’s our proof that we once loved. Grief is the receipt we wave in the air that says to the world: Look! Love was once mine. I love well. Here is my proof that I paid the price.”
— Glennon Doyle Melton (via 89words)
“Grief is a shapeshifter”. Its something I wrote in my poetry book not soon after my grandmother’s death. I described it like a sea, going and coming like the waves, something that ebbs and flows based on the time. Grief takes time they say. But also it doesn’t. It lives forever , somewhere in some corner. My grief over death never went away no matter how much I grew. The grief of losing parts of myself is something that stretches uncomfortably, like a second skin all dry and shriveled. My grief over my grandmother, silent in its being.
“Grief is different. Grief has no distance. Grief comes in waves, paroxysms, sudden apprehensions that weaken the knees and blind the eyes and obliterate the dailiness of life.”
— Joan Didion, in The Year of Magical Thinking
I get a little sad when I eat the mango pickle she made, something she made as a gift that would survive her. I get sad when I sit in her room too long, when the bed feels way too huge without her presence. I get sad sometimes, out of nowhere, simply because I stayed still in a place too long. There is no say in the matter. But it gets easier to remember, to cope when you realize its just the love I had and have for her.
When I yearn to watch Marathi soap operas its because I loved watching them with her and that love, with nowhere to go, turns into grief and dissolves in me. When me and my mom make her favorite dishes in her memory we are silent, mind reeling back to her memories. In that silence, is the love and grief. Except its both the same. When my mom cries over her loss and I sit next to her, its sad but its love. Its her love and my love and the love we are missing out on now. Its all grief so it is all love.
i also wrote about how grief was like a fire. Something raging and burning and full of hatred. Grief makes you angry. It corrupts you, blackens your insides. That love turns itself outside-in and turns to hate. Love and hate are two sides of the same coin after all.
I get angry sometimes, when grief renders me immobile in my day to day life. I get angry at the people who caused me the grief, for making me suffer. I’m angry at cancer, for robbing me of my grandmother. I’m angry that she’ll never get to read my stories. I’m angry that she’ll never get to congratulate me over my results. I’m angry beyond anything, that she’ll never , ever get to see off to college. How do you look forward to missing someone who is not even there? How do you love someone that’s gone? It’s unfair. Its horrible. It is what it is.
But mostly, mostly the grief is necessary. Its there because the pain of loss is what makes loving something so special. its there because it is what’s left of the love, it is what is love, it is love overflowing out of you, pouring into the narrative we call life.
My great grandmother used to prepare me for my grief. I used to sit in her lap while her wizened hands, gnarled like bark and callused from all the butter she churned, would direct my little hands in a demonstration of grief. “Tu kaisey royegi jab me marungi?” (How will you cry when I die?) And I would demonstrate by balling up my fists and fake crying, until she was satisfied with my attempt at grief. She did this the entire time I knew her and when other people called it too morbid for me, she simply said that it was life and I had to practice for when my time would come. when her time would come.
when she died, I played my part perfectly, naturally. I think she would have been proud of me, if she could see me.
she taught me that because she knew grief. Old women carry a lot in their hearts. She loved me and I loved her and she knew I would cry one day. She knew grief would take over me. So my silly wonderful great grandmother made me practice. for her and for the next time I grieved. I will love her forever for that.
And now beloved reader, i leave you with this quote by Jandy Nelson.
May your grief come. May your grief leave.