A year ago, I woke up and reached for my iPad to check the time, and perhaps to spend ten minutes delaying the day. I opened up Facebook and read about the death the previous day of a beloved Uncle. My uncle, Abdul Qayyum Khan, is (was) my penfriend-turned-brother's father and also for some time, my primary correspondent. We met only a couple of times but especially after my father's death, in my heart, in my life, he was another parent and a well-loved, loving elder. About an hour later, we received a call from a cousin. My Chitti, my mother's younger sister, best friend and alter ego, had slipped away from us. The family is still reeling. Youngest child of her parents, she seemed to be a large part of their heart, and in her absence, some life has palpably gone out of her siblings as well. We had barely recovered, when my (oldest cousin) brother left us. He had been ill with Parkinson's for a long time but for us, he remained first and best, to be admired and emulated for reasons that changed as we both grew older.
January 2018 was a truly horrible month.
I want to write about these three people because they were each wonderful and irreplacable in my life but it turns out I have no words even now.
Instead, let me write about grief. Since my father's death in 1995, grief has become an important filter in my life.
Appa died suddenly. When someone does that, you really have to wonder about the meaning of life and what makes something a good life. In his life, I found the following answers: Life is meant to be lived fully, and in the moment, and a good life is one in which you give as much as you can, maybe more. I was grieving when I did my field research in Sri Lanka, and I always say, that along with words that people spoke, I heard grief that they left unspoken. Grief hears grief.
And so grieving teaches compassion. You know that there is one perfomed reality and one that is just under the surface, triggered easily and unexpectedly. For instance, walking into a newspaper office to do an interview, the smell of ink from the printing press undid my composure. I was interviewing a woman editor and spent the first ten minutes sobbing in her office. And I don't cry easily. I know that each of us carries pain and anxiety and fear and all kinds of things within our neatly groomed performance exteriors. Because I do.
Grief teaches perspective. I can read a hundred posters that tell me everything is transient but when someone just dies, you know well that it is. And a thousand small issues just fall away. What so and so said; whether the prose is perfect; whether the blouse matches... whatever my issue... what remains is the quality of the life lived and the love that the person has invested in the world. All the three people I lost last year loved and gave of themselves generously and were thus loved in return.
Alone on my campus, I went to a counselor because I needed to be in a place where it was safe to feel whatever I felt. After all, one feels grief long past ritual and official mourning periods and sometimes anniversaries just go by but on all other days, you drag grief around as if it were heavy hand luggage in a large, crowded airport and your flights were indefinitely delayed. The counselor shared a beautiful metaphor with me that I will share with you here: Grief is like a diamond, multifaceted. You look at one facet and make your peace with it, but the light catches another and you start over. Sometimes what you see will bring joy and sometimes terrible sorrow. We have been experiencing this since last January.
The bottomline is that as unfortunate as we are to lose people we love, we are very lucky to have had them in our lives in the first place. Their lives are a gift we receive regardless of how deserving we are, and their deaths leave us with another gift--grief. Grief unlocks spaces in our heart that we would not otherwise know existed.
Is it possible to feel gratitude for grief and anger or disappointment that we did not have more time with these wonderful people in our lives? I suppose so, because it simply is. Like the reality that they are not, any more, and yet, sad as we are, our lives keep moving.
January 2018 was a truly horrible month.
I want to write about these three people because they were each wonderful and irreplacable in my life but it turns out I have no words even now.
Instead, let me write about grief. Since my father's death in 1995, grief has become an important filter in my life.
Appa died suddenly. When someone does that, you really have to wonder about the meaning of life and what makes something a good life. In his life, I found the following answers: Life is meant to be lived fully, and in the moment, and a good life is one in which you give as much as you can, maybe more. I was grieving when I did my field research in Sri Lanka, and I always say, that along with words that people spoke, I heard grief that they left unspoken. Grief hears grief.
And so grieving teaches compassion. You know that there is one perfomed reality and one that is just under the surface, triggered easily and unexpectedly. For instance, walking into a newspaper office to do an interview, the smell of ink from the printing press undid my composure. I was interviewing a woman editor and spent the first ten minutes sobbing in her office. And I don't cry easily. I know that each of us carries pain and anxiety and fear and all kinds of things within our neatly groomed performance exteriors. Because I do.
Grief teaches perspective. I can read a hundred posters that tell me everything is transient but when someone just dies, you know well that it is. And a thousand small issues just fall away. What so and so said; whether the prose is perfect; whether the blouse matches... whatever my issue... what remains is the quality of the life lived and the love that the person has invested in the world. All the three people I lost last year loved and gave of themselves generously and were thus loved in return.
Alone on my campus, I went to a counselor because I needed to be in a place where it was safe to feel whatever I felt. After all, one feels grief long past ritual and official mourning periods and sometimes anniversaries just go by but on all other days, you drag grief around as if it were heavy hand luggage in a large, crowded airport and your flights were indefinitely delayed. The counselor shared a beautiful metaphor with me that I will share with you here: Grief is like a diamond, multifaceted. You look at one facet and make your peace with it, but the light catches another and you start over. Sometimes what you see will bring joy and sometimes terrible sorrow. We have been experiencing this since last January.
The bottomline is that as unfortunate as we are to lose people we love, we are very lucky to have had them in our lives in the first place. Their lives are a gift we receive regardless of how deserving we are, and their deaths leave us with another gift--grief. Grief unlocks spaces in our heart that we would not otherwise know existed.
Is it possible to feel gratitude for grief and anger or disappointment that we did not have more time with these wonderful people in our lives? I suppose so, because it simply is. Like the reality that they are not, any more, and yet, sad as we are, our lives keep moving.
1 comment:
I felt the exact same thing in October when my gramma (dad's Mom) passed away.. instead of being sad, I told myself how fortunate I have been to have had both sets of grandparents and a great gramma in my life... 😊😊
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