Holding on and letting go: Reflections on grief and gratitude | Eye Information

My aunt Aruna was the sort of girl you couldn’t sustain with even in case you tried. In her late seventies, she might lace up her sneakers and pound out twelve, fourteen, even eighteen miles on a crisp San Francisco morning whilst you have been nonetheless fumbling to your first espresso. She devoured life the best way she devoured ice cream — with unselfconscious pleasure — and the best way she devoured a humble mooli paratha, with out airs, with out apology. Banker by day, Wordsworth and Ghalib whisperer by evening, mom, grandmother, marathoner, Urdu poetry aficionado.

And but, this vibrant girl, this countless girl, this girl who appeared to have quietly conquered time — taken, similar to that.

It was bacterial meningitis. Hawaii. She had gone to see her daughter and grandchildren. A routine go to. She didn’t come again.

What are we to do with such suddenness? What are we to do after we discover ourselves standing within the wreckage of an extraordinary day, attempting to make sense of the opening somebody’s absence tears into the material of our lives?

We will rage. We will mope. We will cry into our pillows and shake our fists at a God we not recognise. And possibly we must always, for some time. However then, what?

We’re given no selection. Now we have to make our peace. As a result of life — merciless, stunning, detached — doesn’t await us to catch our breath.

And so I sit along with her absence. I really feel it as if she has turn out to be a sort of air — all over the place, invisible, essential. I hear her laughter as I reply calls pacing round my dwelling, attempting to get my day by day steps in. I really feel her with me as I cook dinner and take a look at a recipe destined for a restaurant desk someplace. I sense her presence as I think about the subsequent novel I’ll write, the subsequent guide I’ll dare to place into the world. I really feel her most acutely as I’m grappling with the cussed site visitors of Delhi or Mumbai, attempting to get from level A to level B whereas mourning her quiet passage, feeling the tyres on tarmac join me to her in some way, absurd because it sounds.

I’m starting to know that our lifeless don’t go away us. Not completely.

They migrate into reminiscence. They take up residence in our desires, in our ideas, in our muscle reminiscence, within the unusual little phrases and rituals we discover ourselves repeating with out considering.

They sit quietly in our DNA.

They journey with us into the longer term — the longer term they will not see.

And in case you pay attention, actually pay attention, you may hear them cheering you on. Urging you to maintain going. Urging you to run that further mile. To eat the ice cream and the paratha. To like what you could have left, tougher.

Possibly that is how we make peace: by understanding that life just isn’t a straight line however a circle, and that none of us are actually gone. We modify kind. We transfer planes. Because the Vedantic texts have at all times instructed us: the soul is everlasting, the physique merely its garment.

Aruna has merely slipped into one other garment.

If you lose somebody you’re keen on — really love — you start to see life not as a collection of separate chapters however as one lengthy continuum. You see that our story collectively doesn’t finish as a result of her story right here has. I’m her, and she or he is me, and we — all of us — are one another.

We’re left with gratitude.

We’re left with the blessing of getting shared time, breath, laughter, tears, this earth, this period, collectively.

We’re left with recollections that glint like gold when the day feels gray.

And we’re left with a selection.

We will wallow. Or we are able to stroll ahead — with a deeper reverence for the way fragile, fleeting, unpredictable this unusual factor known as life actually is.

And it’s fragile. It’s fleeting.

Aunt Aruna taught me that — not simply in her life but in addition in her loss of life.

We stay, we work, we run, we plan, as if we now have been handed some contract guaranteeing us a full eighty, ninety, even 100 years. As if we now have earned the fitting to tomorrow.

However the fact is: tomorrow just isn’t promised.

As Kabir sang centuries in the past:
Jo kaal kare so aaj kar, jo aaj kare so ab.
Pal mein pralaya hoyegi, bahuri karega kab?

What you propose to do tomorrow, do in the present day.
What you propose to do in the present day, do now.
In a blink, the world might dissolve —
When will you do it, then?

That’s the solely actual certainty we now have — this second. This breath. This individual subsequent to you. This heartbeat nonetheless pulsing in your chest.

So don’t squander it.

Eat dessert first. Name your mom. Take the journey. Write the poem. Forgive that outdated grudge. Say you’re sorry. Say you’re proud. Say you’re keen on them.

We owe it to the lifeless to maintain dwelling as they might have needed us to. Not timidly. Not half-heartedly. However all in.

I sit right here, penning this, picturing her.

Someplace on a brand new shore. Possibly operating down some divine path lined with jasmine and jacaranda. Possibly reciting Faiz to herself. Possibly smiling that quiet smile of hers, realizing we’ll all catch up quickly sufficient.

I want her peace.

I want her freedom — from this cycle of life and loss of life.

And I thank her — for exhibiting me how wealthy a life could be whenever you refuse to let worry or age or conference gradual you down.

The remainder of us can solely attempt to maintain tempo.

And so, we pause, however we stock on.

That’s what we do with the items. We choose them up and we maintain strolling.

We stroll for them. We stroll towards them. We stroll with them, even now.

As a result of they’re nonetheless right here — within the areas between our ideas, within the quiet of our prayers, within the little decisions we make to stay higher, braver, extra totally.

And when our time comes, might we go as she did — with a life well-lived behind us, and with family members left to recollect us not simply with tears, but in addition with gratitude.

Life is treasured.

Life is fleeting.

Life is something however predictable.

Squeeze it. Savour it. Say what you could say now — as a result of solely a idiot leaves the remaining to destiny.

Pause. However keep on.

Run on, Aruna. Run on.

We’ll see you on the end line.