On grief.

Death is funny. It affects everyone except the person dying.

It is now July. The month of summer and celebration, the month of my birthday. And while there are a million things that should be distracting me right now, I find myself overcome with this looming feeling- not a new one, just a stronger one. Grief is paralysing. It plays with you in these funny ways, and ambushes you when you least expect it.

I have a lot to be grateful for, but I also have a lot to grieve. Having lost all my grandparents, but one- a rather grim way to put it, I know, but sometimes sugarcoating just doesn’t work. I’ve lost my perfect nuclear family dynamic and friends along the way, but of course, some losses are bigger than others, and not all of them are worth writing about- I’ll pick my battles.  

Grief is indescribable. It is not seeking pity for something or someone you have lost; it’s this weight you are left to carry after they leave you.

Exactly 12 days from now, will mark 4 years of the Makhija family losing its prime matriarch, my dadi. We are notorious for not saying difficult things in this family. I sometimes find us referring to her heart attack as ‘the thing that happened on my birthday’. It’s sad, but I think we all know why we do it; it just hurts too much, because every time you say it, you also relive the moment for a split second.

I have waited for this feeling to go away, but it does not, and I honestly hope it never will. Because losing the feeling of grief will mean that the impact that person had on your life, no longer exists.

Suddenly, every song, every film, every painting, every piece of art made around the theme of loss, gets associated with the person you’re grieving. Whether or not that was the intent of its creator. There's this line in Frank Ocean’s song Seigfried: This is not my life, it’s just a fond farewell to a friend. Originally, by Elliot Smith, who meant it as a last goodbye to his drug problem, whom he thinks of as a friend. Though not for the intended reasons, I resonate with this lyric deeply. From my experience, the moment you lose someone, your life becomes about them in a way. You think about them way more than you did when they were around, and everything you do is somehow motivated by a sense of validation from them, a person who actually no longer exists in this world.

Sometimes they show up in your dreams, and you try to hold onto them, thinking it’s them trying to communicate with you. Sometimes you get a whiff of their scent and look around to realise they’re not there anymore. Sometimes you hear a song they liked, or see someone who looks like them or hear an echo of their laughter- and it hits you. They’re just not there anymore. I wonder if this re-realisation ever stops. If it’s a genuine fault of the human brain, which often tends to put itself at the centre of everything, or if it’s your psyche’s way of hurting itself time and time again.

Grief is sad, yes. But I think ignoring it is sadder. Birthday messages for the deceased stop coming on the family groups with the same frequency every year, the fear that you’ll forget what they sounded like or looked like starts creeping in, and eventually, you stop crying and just start living your life as it is again. Of course, it’s never the same. The only constant is that feeling that’ll punch you in the gut when no one, or everyone, is watching.

I am probably one of the biggest sceptics you’ll ever meet. I don’t believe in a God, I don’t believe in following a religion or anything else, which I’ll hold off from saying, for the sake of public sentiment. But if there’s one thing I truly believe in, it’s that they’re floating around you somewhere, always watching. Maybe it’s a coping mechanism, maybe it’s real. Everyone finds out soon enough.