A brief encounter with grief

“They say time heals all wounds, but that presumes the source of the grief is finite”― Cassandra Clare

It's dark. All you can see is the movie running on the screen of that big strange television screen. Bright scenes, eyes squinting from reflection, dark scenes, and black turns the room.

There is a smell of a different house because it is one. Another home, or household. An extra kindness. They’re polite but you are far from home.
You worry while the movie adds weights layering your heart; if you’ll see mom again. If yes, how and when. Why didn't they let me stay at my favorite neighbor’s closer to my home?

This place is far, I cannot run home, I don't know the way, I might get lost. The night seems endless. The movie is painfully beautiful. Why are they letting a kid watch a movie so late at night, so bad for the eyes in the dark? What are they covering up; What are they not telling me? Is mom ok?

The front door is closed, must be the strangeness of the room or the depth of the movie, that's giving me chills. Or I’m missing mom and dad.
That day evening, after school, when I went home to grab a few more things, I walked around the rooms and cried, worried if the three of us wouldn’t be “home” together. 12 years and few feelings remain.

Well, I was 14. The movie was Fanaa. Mum and dad did come back home after she was completely cured of her illness for which she was hospitalized away for a month.

Flash forward to a couple of months before my 22nd birthday. The same chills. The downside is that everything is clearer than when I was 14. Except for that feeling of someone having left the front door open on a cold winter night. That hasn't changed a bit.This time, it's dad, and this time, it's over and he is gone. Sometimes you hear Fanaa playing in the background, and you are taken back to that dark room. It’s my favorite movie, yet have haunting memories attached to it, or say fear of loss attached to it. Aptly.

Grief stays hidden in your shopping choices even- why you do not prefer whites coz they cannot tolerate roughness or they hold a long not-lost memory tied to another death soon after dad’s. The shirts and sneakers that you choose over dresses and heels because it’s just easier to run in the former. Why run, well I never could answer that question. The guard that’s constantly up, the survival mode full-time kicked in, might have something to do with it. Or maybe, just maybe- I wanna run “home”, whatever is left of it at least.

Grief doesn’t mean you miss somebody and you cry and then you move on. Sometimes, grief is the chills on a warm sunny day. Grief is the adult nightmare of a tiger chasing you time and time again, and other nightmares with a pattern, the vulnerability of a feeling- the front door missing to the house, anything could happen. Grief is a panic attack at night after having a good day. Grief is forgetting to breath at the sight of a marigold field- grief is a memory that feels like yesterday.

If you ever feel bad for the grief not going away or lessening in impact, please know, that your heart is what grows bigger to accommodate it, your strength is what it takes to fight the overwhelm every time, you wake up every morning and go for the day, knowing what nights will bring, is what keeps you floating. Closures are a dream and very shaky at that. Sometimes, it looks like it's ending, the fight is over, put your armor down, and some days you are caught off-guard. And you know what, It. Is. Okay.

It. Is. Completely. Okay.