Dancing with grief
Now, now that you are gone, I see the miracles everywhere.
Oh, but did I have to lose you to gain faith?
I walked into 2021 with hope in my heart. Believing, like many, that the worst of the pandemic was over.
2020 had us confront the relentless COVID surges, the harrowing deaths, the harsh lockdowns, the widening gap between the rich and poor. Surely, 2021 was going to be different? The promise of vaccines, a flattened curve? But 2021 had other plans — for me, and the rest of the world.
This year, I lost two of my dearest friends, in March and in November. And just when I was getting out of the fog of despair, in December, I lost my beloved father.
Each time I thought I had confronted and conquered grief, and each time I thought I could win. But grief is not a mountain to be climbed, nor a tract of land to be conquered or colonized, nor a fight to be won. If there’s one thing that I have learnt through these harrowing, arduous months is that grief is sort of like a dance.
A dance with a partner whose ask is that you let go. Let go and trust the dance. Trust that the dance may be filled with difficult, painful twists and turns. And lest we forget, this is no easy dance with clear instructions. But it is a dance nonetheless, where the pain and the torment will also be accompanied with infinite grace, peace, compassion, and even joy. Because the other side of grief’s coin, is love — there is no grief without love, and no love without grief. And just as there is no grief without love, there is no dance, without trust or faith.
I saw the many faces of what we call “grief,” this year. When my dearest friend Lorna was in her last days, I saw the face of grief, coloured in with love and faith. I saw her husband, familiar with multiple hospital visits all through her brief and beautiful life, remain by her side, unwavering until her last moments. Knowing that even if he only had a short spell with her on this earth, that the choice to be with her was always worth it. I saw a community rally with faith, prayers, and support, showering Lorna’s daughter with love and warmth. I witnessed aunties stepping into the breach — helping on school runs, trips to the dentist, shopping, birthday parties. Houses and arms opened, ready to hold, ready to send love and light. I saw grief knit together communities with a depth that was uncommon.
When my beautiful friend Farai struggled with cancer, I saw the face of grief, buoyed by hope and faith, when her friends made sure organic food was cooked for her in her last days — so her two-year old would be also able to share in her last meals. I saw a brother willingly take his nephew as his ward — standing in the gap for a sister even as he mourned her death. I saw love melt into memory, and pain into song.
I saw the face of grief when my mother calmly held my father’s hand as he courageously faced a complicated surgery. When aunts cooked him his salt-free meals and tended to his care. I saw grief in a doctor’s worn face, telling me that he had tried his best, and it wasn’t enough. I saw sisters and friends send multifaith messages of solidarity and support to me and my loved ones, across the ocean, in prayer and song. I have never felt more broken, nor felt more loved — never more moved by grief as by faith.
And I still see the face of grief — and love — in the care that surrounds my frail, blind grandmother, Patti, as she slips in and out of memory, but yet responds to song. I see the face of grief and love as my sons caress my Patti’s hands and ask her silly questions to keep her spirits up and her senses sharp. I see the twin sides of grief and love as Patti’s carers, Eswari and Jyothi, lovingly indulge her non sequiturs, while they dignify her last days and months with the tenderest of care.
There have no doubt been harrowing moments this year. Moments when I felt a bleak and unyielding despair, when nothing seems to make sense anymore, and everything filled me with rage. Feeling the depths of injustice at watching my precious friend lose the battle to COVID when she had triumphed over so many other odds. Processing the unfairness of an innocent two-year old being left behind with no biological parents. Managing the desperation of having to phone blood banks repeatedly in the midst of fading hope for my father’s surgery. Moments of sheer rage, of anguish, of tearful helplessness — why would a loving and compassionate universe be so unfair? And yet, each time, even as I didn’t get a response, the only balm that soothed was trusting the dance of grief. In the crush of grief’s embrace, there was also a soaring, inexplicable beauty.
Totems in nature appeared when I needed them most; snatches of music became my sustenance. When Lorna passed, the incandescent Hartlaub’s Turaco became our feathered friend. Its red-tinged wings gave us a burst of hope in a despondent time. When I could no longer mouth the words of prayer, in Farai’s final days, the plaintive melody of song better expressed the keening of my soul. I experienced the depth and profundity of this prayer, whispered at first, but then sounding louder than a thunderstorm. When my father faced his final earthly challenge, a Catholic hymn from my childhood repeatedly rose to my lips, now imbued with a different meaning. Grief deepens memories, burnishing them with meaning and love.
And so, instead of looking for answers, I looked for beauty and truth. As I lit my father’s funeral pyre, I felt as if I was also lighting a way to the past and the future — a passageway to both legacy and possibility. And the miracles kept appearing. I stepped out from the cremation ground in Coimbatore, I saw the greater coucal flit across the sky, its brick-red wings auguring a prophecy of good fortune. Losing loved ones has made me first realise grief’s initial form, but in time, faith and love have helped it shapeshift into beauty and truth.
As I let go of the clay pot that held my father’s ashes into the river, I experienced a strange calm. The eddying waters of the sacred river Kaveri wove their ancient poetry around my waist — connecting me to something greater, to a tapestry of life that converges into a single, pure universal truth.
I walked into 2021 with hope in my heart. I leave with strange and unexpected companions — grief, but also faith, and love.
Hope, untethered from faith, is like an anchor in shifting sands. Hope, devoid of love, is a husk of a drum. But hope, with faith as a feather, can fly. Hope, with love as a heartbeat, is the greatest cadence that can measure time and our presence on earth. And finally, hope, both buoyed and weighted by grief, is the very marrow of existence.
I wandered into 2021 with little else but hope. But hope was cabin baggage, really, in a year that needed me to “check in” with many suitcases. Fully, completely, intentionally. Now, as odd as it might sound, I have all the checked baggage in the world. Hope, grief, a renewed faith and a deepened love. And yet, I feel both a lightness and a depth that I have never known before.
I am dancing into 2022.
