A Story of Love and Remembrance

Death and its aftermath are hard to grasp. At first, I felt numb—words failed me, and the future felt unreal. All I wanted was to talk about her, to let her memory stay with me. Sometimes, we don’t need answers; we just need space to share. Grief, after all, is love searching for its place.

Grief can be paradoxical. We want to say so much, but we hold ourselves back, or we are held back. 

“Everyone was asking me how I am, how my family is. And I really appreciate that, I know they’re asking it out of care. She was the one who passed away but only a few asked me about HER. But I just wanted to talk about Nani. Remember her, memorise my favourite stories of her. But there was no such space.”

And that’s why we’re here. When we can’t find the space we crave, we create it. 

I didn’t have any cousins around my age, so at all family functions and get-togethers my Nani was my best friend . I would instantly find her and sit with her and we would start gossiping and laughing. I spent a big chunk of my childhood at her house, my mom would drop me at Nani’s house while going to work and pick me up at night. Somewhere along this, Nani was my home.

There are so many things about her I want to keep remembering. She never, not even once stopped me from doing anything because I was a girl. She was a girls’ girl before that was even a thing. Something she said has always stayed with me:

“Even if you feel like you don’t deserve something, ask anyway. Worst case scenario is they’ll say no, best case is that you’ll receive what you deserve”. 

She would scream at me for my spelling mistakes, sit in front of the TV and feed me, buy crates of ice cream during my summer vacation because she knew I would love it. And all three of us, Nani, Nana and me would sit around and eat ice cream. She loved CID, Candy Crush, Sudoku, and all the junk food she could get. She was just… the best. 

When she initially got admitted to the hospital, I thought it was something routine. But she got worse, and eventually the doctors told us that we need to prepare ourselves for anything, that we needed to stop hoping. When I went to meet her, you know what she did? She kept excitedly telling all the nurses and doctors about me: “Look, look, my granddaughter is here!”

Death and its aftermath is a very weird thing to comprehend. My brain went numb initially. I couldn’t feel or say anything. What was there to say? I didn’t want to think about what was coming and talking about it felt equally odd. I realised that everyone wanted to make sense out of what I wanted to share with them. Figuring me out –  “I’m just depressed and wanted to cry.” But all  I really wanted was to talk about her, remember her. I wanted that space for her memory to linger around me. Sometimes we don’t need to make sense of everything – we just want to share. All of this grief is just so much love. 

I hope this grief stays with me because

Its all the unexpressed love I didnt get to tell her

Andrew Garfield

My Nani has genuinely shaped me into the person I am today. She helped me become more confident, speak up, do whatever I want because at the end of the day, everyone’s too busy with themselves and judgment really never is personal. You do you. And she cared about me so, so  much, for the smallest of falls and scratches; she was always there.  She took me to the hospital once when I got stung by a wasp and so there’s that….

As we’re wrapping up, Sharanya excitedly remembers an anecdote, somewhere saving the sweetest one for the last. 

My Nani had these gold earrings I really loved as a kid, and being a kid – I wanted them. She laughed and told me that I’m too young right now, I’ll get them when I’m getting married. After her funeral and last rites, my uncle came up to me and gently handed me the same earrings. 

“Naani had me to give these to you, she wanted you to have them”

I had completely forgotten about them. But she never did. She looked out for me till the end. 

We all sat in silence for some time. Reflecting over the past hour, thinking about Nani, love, and more importantly, how we never talk about the aspects of grief we want to talk about the most. 

“It feels lighter to have shared all this. I’m glad we created this space, because it didn’t exist before this. Seeing other people tell their stories made me want to speak about my own experiences. We’re kind of setting the stage for other people to read this and share their grief and love. Because it can be scary to figure out how to do this on your own. We all want to be strong in front of each other – but we all want the same thing at the end of the day:

We want to talk unabashedly about grief and love.