Short Essays on Grief - Puja

Burn

Last night, I fell asleep wishing for the world to burn. 

The truth is, grief did not make me strong or loving or heroic. 

It did not give me purpose. It did not provide reason. It did not give me clarity. 

Grief is grotesque. It ravaged me from the inside out. 

And when my grief bubbles up in my throat - I wish for the world to burn. 

Because I am shackled to my grief. It is a straightjacket of hopelessness, of anguish, of rage, of guilt.

Burn. It would be easier if it all burned. 

Today, I woke up with a quieter grief. 

A quiet grief that is nestled deep in my bones. 

A grief that is one with the marrow. 

A grief that cradles me in her lap, whispering, someday you will see that I am love.

It’s been five years since I said goodbye to you, baby brother. 

I didn’t think I'd make it 5 minutes. 

But I did. 

Then I didn't know if I'd make it in five hours, but I did. Then five days, five weeks, five months, and five years. 

But I did. 

There are still days where I don't know if I'll make it through five minutes, let alone another five years without you. 

And in those darkest moments, I talk to you, my brother.

I talk to you the same way I talk to god. 

Because my eternal prayer is that there is a god, and that you are with them, and that you are happier and more at peace than you ever were on earth. 

I talk to you the same way I talk to god because I find you in everything beautiful. 

I see you in the pink sunrises that welcome the world.

I hear you in laughing children.

I honor you in every moment I remember to act with grace and compassion. 

I call to you in the burning sunsets that set the world alight. 

I look for you in the full moon that takes my breath away and in the stars that burn the galaxies. 

I see you in everything that makes the world beautiful, my baby brother. My Abhay. 

I love you.

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Silence

I held my brother’s hand when he died. 

He was 22.

His hand was warm. His eyes closed. He looked so peaceful. The same face I had shared a bed with on family vacations in India. The same face who I had wooden spoon sword fights with. The same face who told me loved me more than anyone - even mom and dad. 

I held his hand in mine and tried to memorize every inch of his face, etching the lines and slopes of his boylike face into my bones. 

I’m not sure if I should be writing about this. An ex boyfriend once told me that I “revel in my grief”. 

If I don’t drown myself in it myself, though, how will I learn to swim? Because now my home is an ocean of grief.

As I held his hand, I begged him to wake up. Begged him to show the doctors that their tests were wrong. Begged him to show the gods that he was stronger. 

He didn’t listen. 

The day before, when I found out he was never going to wake up, I threw away every statue of the Hindu gods we had in the house. Every false idol of every god made of brass or stone or wood ended up in the trash. 

Betrayers. Traitors. 

Only the physical body has died, but the soul remains, the priest told us, two weeks later at my brother’s funeral. As if that was supposed to comfort us. As if that could mend the fissure in my soul. 

In the moments while my brother’s heart stopped, I begged those same gods to save him. 

They hadn’t listened the day before. They had let him get to this point. But maybe they would listen now. Maybe now they saw and truly knew how much I loved my brother. Maybe it had all been a test. To see if I could handle it. 

They didn’t listen. 

When you’re declared brain dead and the ventilator turns off, death comes quickly. 

It comes even quicker than the way they show in movies. 

Every second a lifetime of pleading for anything other than death and also moving faster than the flutter of a single heartbeat. 

I held my brother’s hand while he died. 

His heartbeat on the screen slowed. The green numbers turning lower and lower. 

The blue numbers kept glowing like a false beacon as they showed his oxygen levels dropping. 

The green numbers kept decreasing. 

I cradled his hand gently, reminding me of the first time I met him. 

It was after school when my dad drove us to the hospital. I was seven. I remember being so excited to meet him. We drove over the bridge and I watched the ocean glimmer as I counted down the minutes to get to him. 

I watched him through a glass window, my baby brother. He was in the nursery, cheeks glowing pink, chubby and bright. I longed to hold him in my arms, feel his little hand in mine. 

Seven-year-old me didn’t know that twenty-two years later, I'd be holding his hand in a hospital again to breathe our last goodbye. 

The green numbers with his heartbeat stopped. The waves of his heartbeat now straight. 

He was gone. 

Did you know that the machine doesn’t make the flatline sound like in the movies? The doctors turn it off - a simple act of kindness in the cruelest moment. 

I wish I could tell you that I let him go gracefully. 

That I told him it was okay to go. That we would be okay. That he was in a better place. 

I didn’t. 

I wept quietly. His hand still warm in mine. 

This was a punishment. Karma. Only that could explain such senseless death, such a cataclysmic loss. My brother was the kinder one, the more patient one, the more loving one. Wordlessly, I begged for mercy. Mercy from the Hindu gods. From Jesus. From Allah. From the universe. From anyone out there who would listen. One more chance to be better. That I was sorry for every bad thing I'd ever done. That I’d be good forever if he could just come back. 

Not one of them listened.

As I walked out of the hospital room, I kept wishing for the doctor to run after me. There had been a mistake. He was awake. He’s okay. It was all a fluke. He’s alive. 

Nobody came. 

We drove home in silence. 

The sound of the silent hospital room reverberating in my body. 

I held my brother’s hand when he died, as he died. 

The green flat line of his heartbeat branded into my mind.