The Tender Truth About Grief I Learned From My Father’s Death
Grief is mistaken as some hateful adversary we must recoil and ‘move on’ from, but grief is simply a lingering of love that no longer knows its way out of our chests. So what can we do but accept its presence, make it feel held and treat it with the same depth of compassion and permanence with which we’d treat love? After all, they are one and the same.
Each year, I brace my heart for this week, though still never quite enough-the anniversary of my dad’s death. And maybe l will never be able to, but I have come to be at peace with this.
Because grief, as they say, is just unspent love. Love that pools beneath the surface of your eyes, gathers as a rock in your throat, nests in the hollow of your chest. Some days lying low barely to be felt, some days rising with the tide of its tears-unexpectedly, but as forceful as ever. Grief, as they say, is just love with no place to go. But love, to be lost, needs first to have wandered.
If our sandglasses ran bare and, as for my dad, our time suddenly announced, would our hearts look back and feel full for the lives we have led?
If the only true final measure of success was happiness, would we smile and say-we succeeded?
All I know is, I want to have felt love that has wandered. Love whose smile lines have become wrinkled, love that has been met unconditionally, love that hurts this hard when it is finally left with no place to go, but to rest in the hollow of my chest.
Love only feels the stillness of loss if it has first travelled, and felt, and seen, and laughed, and been touched, and fought, and forgiven, and adored, and been adored by, the one with which it was shared.
And so, if at the end of it all, love has no place to go, is it not our job, whilst we can, to let it journey freely and express itself tirelessly? Even when uncomfortable, even when vulnerable, even when our egos scream not to. Even, and especially.
There will come a day when we no longer can and the only place our love will wander is the corridor of memories we have led it to create.
It is the work of our lives to make this corridor a beautiful place to stay.
Grief is mistaken as some hateful adversary we must recoil and ‘move on’ from, but grief is simply a lingering of love that no longer knows its way out of our chests. So what can we do but accept its presence, make it feel held and treat it with the same depth of compassion and permanence with which we’d treat love? After all, they are one and the same.
So yes, grief may well be love with no place to go. But the place from which it came-the birthplace and the lifespan of such love-this is worth all the and more the pain of loss. And so it resides in a place within us which remains always in reach.
Inspiration: My dad was always the one person in my world who loved to hear me play piano. Whenever my hands so much as laid themselves on the keys, he would dramatically clap from next door to make me laugh, or I would hear him turn down the TV to silently listen, or he would come up behind me, graze my cheek with the back of his hand, and say “oh Meggy estu cennagittu”-Meggy that was lovely-in Kannada, our mother tongue. Piano gives me the space to release my unspent love, to feel his essence close and suddenly, again, I am reminded that he is a part of me always; still as much here as I believe him to be.
