This Friday, I had my first real personal reckoning with grief during this period of crisis the world’s been living through the past twelve months. I lost my grandfather, my Nanaji. It was not entirely unexpected, but one never expects the loss of someone dear. We know, but don’t acknowledge it. It is inevitable, yet we attach a vague future-ness to it. And it always catches us off-guard, when someone we are close to is one day, just no more.
There are many rituals around death where I’m from. Having experienced two deaths prior to this, of my father’s and my Nani or grandmother’s, I know the true purpose behind the family getting together for an extended period in the aftermath of losing a loved one. Unlike a funeral in Western countries that probably last a day, in India families (extended and distant included) come together for a length of thirteen to fifteen days that encompass various rituals and ceremonial milestones.
The ceremonies and rituals are just a performance however. What really goes on during those days is a collective coming to terms. Collective grieving. Grief demands company. It needs remembrances shared, stories told, broad colourful strokes from the canvas that was the departed’s life. Moments are picked and cherished, cried together on, laughed together about. Laughter, yes. I have seen it heal. It’s this shared time that helps everyone transition, accept, and adapt to the void left behind. It’s the normalization of loss, through performance together of daily mundanities. Sharing the morning cups of tea around the dining table (a family ritual even in ordinary times) with the one person missing, cooking, eating, reminiscing, post-dinner lingering, going to bed and waking up again. It’s eases the ones who were living with the now deceased into the new rhythm. It’s strength gendered by companionship. It’s catharsis.
I always knew, without ever having given it any conscious thought, that I would be there when this day came. I somehow always assumed it an almost-fact that I would be by his side when he passes. I wasn’t, and I can’t travel now to share my grief with others who are grieving. Technology notwithstanding, distance makes all the difference. My mind can’t come to terms fully with him not being there anymore. It’s just a factual change. I don’t see him not being where he used to be, sitting, sipping his morning tea, and talking in his typical half-amused, half-adorable but always engaged manner. So it’s harder for me to accept that he is not. Distant as I continue to be, I don’t see his absence. And therefore the grief fails to unlock. It washes over me in waves that recede, but I am unable to reconcile what I know with my implicit expectation to see him again. Coming to terms is eluding me.
I was close to him, and he to me. He was perhaps a bigger influence in my life than anyone else. The richness that having him as my Nanaji added to the tapestry of my life, the possibilities that it opened for my personality development were defining. He shaped my character, my curiosity, my sense of wonder at the universe, my love for stories and gave me the gift of quiet, determined ambition. His faith in me and what I could achieve was unconditional, and I knew in my heart that I could never let him down.
Had I been next to him in his last days, I would have reminded him, how deeply he’s touched my life, and how much he will be remembered. That would have made him smile a tear, I think. I would have held his frail hands into my own, and held them till the end. I wanted to be the one walking him through to the other side. He was my Nanaji, and I wanted to be there not for him, but for me. He died surrounded by family and grandkids, a blessing in these times. He was at home, well-taken care of, with a house full of loved ones. Not being there was my loss, not his.
I don’t want to stop hearing his voice in my head. My mind doesn’t trust my memory, it wants to solidify, to commemorate. It is busy hoarding memories and filing them into neat cabinets so I can revisit them later at will. It doesn’t want to let go of a single one. I find myself deliberately strolling corridors of my past, looking for nuggets of time I shared with him, his smile, the affectionate names he called me and the million affectionate ways he showered his love. I want to re-live them, and preserve them, to be relived again.
I don’t yet know how to let him go. I don’t yet know that I won’t see him again. Maybe I will only truly know when I don’t.
Post Script: The COVID-19 pandemic is an epidemiological crisis, and an economic one. In equal measure however, it’s a psychological crisis too. And if we think that this will not leave behind a severe overhang of psychological complications and emotional cobwebs for most of us to deal with, we couldn’t be farther from the truth. This black swan event has engendered loss- of livelihood, of loved ones, of normalcy, of freedom- while taking away from us the most potent mechanisms to cope with that loss, i.e. being able to be with with friends and family, being able to share.
And I strongly feel we need to talk more openly about loss and grieving, more so now than ever. This will humanize our workplaces, and help us rid of the impossible demands we place on ourselves of separating the personal from the professional.
