Of Heartaches, loss and everything in between.
It’s very easy to get dissociated when you hear the news that a loved one has passed away. You don’t want to believe it and it takes a long time to accept what has happened. Almost everyone that I have spoken to, who have experience a death of their loved one, vouch for the fact that disbelief is the first emotion they felt on hearing the news. Even in situations where the person passing on was old, bedridden, or struggling with a disease which entails a survival rate of 5% — nothing can prepare you to hear that they are no more, anymore.
Last month, on receiving the sad news of a death in the family, caused me to reflect about loss and death, and how we process grief. It brought forth a lot of questions that I had assumed to have dealt fully well with, when my paternal grandparents had passed away, in a span of 14 months apart from each other. Losing a loved one is a strange experience; in that they remain the most important person in your life, yet they become a taboo topic for most around you. It can create a rift and is very isolating. The fact remains that the people around you cannot ascertain the extent of damage done to your grieving heart. So, they hesitate; with words, with their actions, careful not to overstep, to not oversimplify what has happened. I remember conversations with close friends after my grandfather, Baba, had passed away and how I was repeatedly told that, I should get a hold of myself, and how he is in a happier place now. I failed to understand that how can an unknown space, between the stars, or in the promise of a new birth somewhere else in the universe, be termed as a “happier place”, than having him right here with us. On having told the same when my grandmother, Dadi, passed away a little over a year later — I burst out crying, and at the risk of sounding selfish, demanded them back because well, they were my happy place.
I remember feeling scared that what if the memory of their death, of seeing their silent, motionless faces, would be how I would always remember them. What if those final moments overwrote all the happy memories I had with them? Grief, in addition to lack of sleep, can make you question really ridiculous things. Now that I think of it, I cannot believe how I ever thought that I’ll remember people who gave me so much to remember them through, only by their death. You should remember this too that; Death is only an unwelcome guest.
To live in the hearts of the people one leaves behind, is not to die. The death of a loved one is destabilizing. The world doesn’t feel safe anymore, the ground one walks on doesn’t feel solid. But you move past the initial heartbreak, no matter how much time it takes, you eventually do move past it. You watch yourself narrating funny anecdotes about them to others, with a hearty laugh. The memories that you felt territorial about, the very ones about them that you never wanted to share with anyone else — trust me, you will ultimately share them. You will start speaking of them the way you always used to, with no air of solemnity or sorrow. Their name would continue being the household word that it always was, it would be spoken once again without a enormous effort, without ghost of a shadow upon it.
The ones you love never really leave you. The physical proximity to them will be over; true and that sucks but it’s not the end. A beautiful, long life lived by someone cannot simply vanish, forgotten in a split second when they stop breathing. It is bigger than that, it always is. You will find their imprints all around you; on a bad day — when suddenly a rainbow would appear, when their favorite flowers would blossom, when you find their handwritten letters, when someone’s dialect would sound exactly like theirs — it will reassure you, that they’ve never truly left.
And once in a while, someone’s observation of you — of you being, in some ways, exactly like the one who has passed away, will leave you stunned. The similarities between you and them, would peek through the shape of your nose, width of your smile, texture of your hair, or maybe in the words that you speak. So, remember that every time you tell their story, it’s actually their voices echoing through; and if that’s not a comforting thought, then I don’t know what is.
