Grief is a weird thing. You can read up all about it, gather as much knowledge as you want but nothing really prepares you for it.

I like to understand stuff. You know.... knowledge is power and all that crap. So when I lost my grandma last year, I did what I always do. I started reading up about grief. Everything I could find, I read. Joan Didion came very close to helping but her writing is so raw that I couldn't bring myself to read more than 10 pages at a time.

Then there was advice from friends, family and strangers on Twitter. Everyone had something that they found helpful. Spoiler alert: you've gotta find your own thing. (Shocking). Because grief never really goes away. Or even reduces. The boulder on your chest sits there comfortably no matter how much you fidget under it.

Not sure about which stage of grief I am at but (as cliched as it sounds) the only thing that helped was letting it consume me. How do you do that? Well, I cried (a LOT) ... often in public. Once in an auto thinking about what Shah Rukh Khan must be going through dealing with his son's case. 'So unfair' i remember thinking.

Then I cried every time I cooked something she liked. Sometimes even when I saw an old person. You get the gist - I cry.

Don't for a minute think that I gave up on my reading about grief. So sure I was (still am) that there will be a book or a chapter or even a line that will make sense of it all.

The thing that bothered me the most was that I didn't regret spending more time with her. Isn't that what everyone says? "I wish i had spent more time with you." I mean, what is wrong with me? Shouldn't I also want that? Surprisingly, I didn't.

Do I want to pick up the phone and call her? Often. Especially on days when I forget she's gone. Do I regret the times I could've called? Nup. Does that make me a bad person? Will let you know once I figure out.

The thing I miss the most about is her hands. She'd often hold mine and tell me that her mom, she and I had the same hands. Just hers were wrinkled now. Something she wasn't too glad about.

Obviously I had to overthink about why her hands are the one thing I miss the most. And then it hit me. Every memory I have of her - her cooking, feeding me, combing my hair before school, playing ludo - her hands were always so central to every memory ... sometimes caressing me, sometimes holding mine while walking and also once throwing a chapal at me. In her defence, I was a very difficult student to teach.

She had osteoporosis so her hands would often hurt a lot. Because her bones were really fragile, we'd massage them very lightly till her pain died down. I never realized how much I looked her hands when she was alive.

It is all so weird when I think about it now. But her hands are what I miss the most.

I don't have the easiest relationship with my family so going home has always been tricky. The first thing i'd do once I enter the house is look for her. Everything got a lot easier then. Now when I am home, i find myself looking at her chair often. Looking around the room to find her. It's been a year since I sat on her bed.

Maybe it will get easier someday. Or it won't. Till then I will keep trying whatever works. Including putting her hair in a locket. Or crying thinking about SRK (she didn't like him much but that's okay).

Okay, don't get creeped out. Not like I cut them off her dead body or anything. My bua gave me some of her old sweaters and one of them had a few strands of silver hair. The clothes still smelled like Godrej's Almond Drops oil (she loved it. yuck).

I will definitely keep writing about her. There's so much about her that you need to know. And because your stories have helped me stay close to her.

Maa

Whenever someone would ask me why I address my dadi as maa, I’d respond by saying ‘I have a mummy and I have a maa’. Mummy is .. well.. mummy. Dadi is my maa. So when my brother-in-law called me on Thursday morning saying ‘Dadi is no more’, it took a while for me to understand what he meant.

karnika.stck.me

if i knew you were going to die that day

i would've held your hands and marvelled at their softness

karnika.stck.me

what grief feels/looks like

sometimes i think of it as a boulder that fell on top of me on an otherwise uneventful morning. other times i think of it as waves, that come crashing whenever i experience a moment of numbness.

karnika.stck.me