Dear Jasmine #3: The Curtain Between Life and Death
"Grief and joy are two sides of living."
Question #3
Dear Jasmine,
How do you deal with grief? The pain never goes away. Some days, even after 5.5 years, life is hard. Losing Appa at 19 and ever since has been hard. I am tired of feeling so spent in life, will it ever stop? How do I make suffering better? (I don’t believe it will ever stop...I really miss my Dad. My heart breaks often missing him. I do not believe people have enough tolerance or empathy to accept the frequency at which I miss him. So I miss him alone. I cry alone.)
I’ve never been in a relationship, I feel like I’ve never (or at least haven’t often) had reckless fun like teenagers do, I feel like I’ve behaved responsibly most of my life and therefore, have missed out on all the fun a 25 YO should have had. I look at my life today and I do not like it, nor do I have the energy to change it alone. I am tired of doing things and going through things alone. I am a single kid, I’ve lost my dad, I’ve lost friends over the year...I feel like I am too sensitive to live here...in this life, in these times. I want to feel safe, loved, happy, peaceful. I often feel a mix of sad and all of the above. Is it ever purely happy and peaceful?
I am so tired of doing anything. How do I keep going? It is hard. 🙈 🙆🏽♀ 💔
I am trying to build a career, I have been failing a lot. I know deep down, I haven’t been trying enough to make it different. I do not feel like I have the energy to fix all of this at once. I feel tired thinking about this. How do I get better at moving? Been stuck here for almost 6 years now...or so it feels.
- Luna
Why was my mum snatched away by cancer within 3 months? Why within not even 6 months of mum being taken away cruelly was my father diagnosed with terminal cancer? Why do the members of my family keep being taken away without God (or whoever it is that controls this) allowing me to grow my family (have babies)?
- Fighting everything being thrown my way. Succeeding but losing a little of me every day as well. (Or AK)
Answer #3: The Curtain Between Life and Death
Dear Luna and AK,
As a writer, I have tried to write fiction about a bunch of people in the afterlife, but I have always failed at depicting what I imagine the afterlife to be like. I’ve tried to use various forms, read up on cultural myths, and even imagine my own version of the post-death experience. Mostly, I have done this to reconcile what I have learnt and seen about death. Every single time, I have failed.
I have realised that it is hard to upend centuries’ worth of storytelling about what happens after we die in order to write an inclusive, merciful story where our post-death existence is a place of healing and joyous rest rather than about penance and bookkeeping. When I imagine a peaceful afterlife for every single one of us, something screams in my head: What about justice? What about justice? I ask myself. That’s why I don’t think I will be able to write this story set in a fictional afterlife no matter how hard I try. There’s so much for me to know about living, and I may still fall short.
We don’t know what happens on the other side of death, Luna and AK, but we know what happens on this side of living. The people who love us will grieve for us so much that their hearts will physically hurt. The people who love us will endure suffering we cannot imagine. The people who we will leave behind will reckon with our absence every single day and they will be forced to live with silence and no answers. The curtain between life and death is too heavy. Both of you know this much better than I do.
I am so sorry that your parent is no more. It is an unimaginable loss, one that cannot be shared. A loss that you have to carry for the rest of your life. I cannot be dishonest to the two of you and pretend to know what it is like to lose a parent, so I won’t do that. I am deeply sorry for your loss.
I don’t know what either of you believes about where your parent is right now or if that is something you like to consider in your process of grief. I say “process” because grief is a long, drawn-out journey. It is not an event. Most cultures have grieving ceremonies and people gather around the bereaved and try to share their loss. Confusing the rituals of grief and the congregations around grief with the easing of pain is easy, but it is not accurate. The harsh truth is that we grieve alone and like Luna says we think about how to make our “suffering better.”
Our parents will never leave our lives, even after they have crossed over from life into the realm of healing and joyous rest. As I said, I don’t know what either of you thinks of the afterlife, but I imagine it to be a place where one doesn’t have to wrestle with their heart anymore, a place where there is healing, freedom, and rest. This is where I imagine my departed loved ones are — in a place where they’re free from the travails of living, where they are healed and made anew.
The honest truth is that there’s no way to tangibly reduce your grief, you’re going to have to ride it out alone. It will ebb and flow. There are, however, ways to tend to it so that it doesn’t hurt as much. I will not suggest you undertake an arduous emotional journey because it is only natural that you’re already going through too much pain. What I want to suggest is to try and tell yourself the most palatable story of where your parent is today. Whatever this story might be, based on your belief system, tell yourself the most palatable, positive version of how they are doing, how they are being, and what their afterlife looks like. If you don’t believe in an afterlife, consider them to be magical universal matter as they’re now a part of the fabric of the universe we live in. This might seem like the time we tell kids that people become stars after they die, but believe me, I am not trying to infantilise you. If you did consider science to be a tangible faith, there could be conclusive proof that humans after death are embedded in the matter of the universe as energy can neither be created nor destroyed, it can only be converted from one form to another.
If all of this sounds gibberish, ignore me, forgive me, and deal with your grief as you know best. None of us has the right to take it away from you or mould it into our version of your pain. Take all the time you need. You deserve to mourn a loss so close to your heart. No one else has to understand your pain for it to be valid. No one has to acknowledge it for it to go away. If you need a grieving ritual, create one based on what suits your situation the best or one that honours your parent in a way that they’d have liked. If you need a witness, as promised, I am your witness and you have been in my thoughts since the first time I read your letter and until now.
As for the rest of your life which might involve a romantic relationship, a career, and behaving like reckless young people, I want to ask you a question — who said you can’t fall head-over-heels in love at 50, start a new career at 40 and be reckless at 65? Who said that?
No God-damned person, that is who.
You have a right to the beauty of this life, to experience love in all its grotesque beauty, and to have a thriving career whenever you want. I was recently told “age is everything” and I couldn’t disagree more. Who made these rules? No one that I know of, and even if they did, so the hell what? Why do humans have to live chained by a collection of rules from birth to death and even in the afterlife? Look at all the millennials and GenZs around you, they’ve changed so much of our social fabric by simply wanting more and refusing to accept less. If this can happen, my darlings, anything can happen. Want more and refuse to accept less. That should be your creed. Want more space to process your grief. Refuse to accept society’s codified rules about when is an appropriate age to dive into seas or kiss one too many people of any gender.
However, in order to do this, you have to take care of yourself. Start by taking care of your minds and hearts because they’re so vulnerable and hurt right now, they need taking care of the most. Take care of your bodies, eat healthy and work towards maintaining your physical health. Luna, you will need this for managing your life. AK, you will need this for managing your life and also taking care of your father. Caregiving is a lot of work emotionally and physically. In a country like ours, it is taken for granted. However, you will have to ask for help, lean on support systems, as well as draw boundaries of how much you can provide and the fact that you will call all the shots. Everyone at the Dear Jasmine community is keeping you and your dad in our thoughts. We send you strength and healing.
We have acknowledged that grief is a lonely process, but you don’t have to do everything alone. Surround yourself with friends, don’t push them away. They might not know how to address your grief, but if you can have a conversation with them on what works and doesn’t work for you, it can help set expectations. Most grieving people tend to go into a cave, and maybe you might, too. Please exit the cave from time to time and interact with your friends or your support systems even if it means playing a board game with them or drinking coffee or tea in silence. Don’t make islands of yourselves. Don’t place limits on yourselves and don’t let your grief define your life story. Neither of your parents would want that.
I know a few people who have lost loved ones early in life and have let that grief dictate many of their life decisions. It makes sense why, I won’t deny that. What happened to you is unfair. It is enraging. It is inexplicable. But please try to forgive. Forgiving the universe for the sorrow it gave you puts you in control and tells the universe who’s the boss. You are the boss. Forgiveness is very difficult but freeing. How we respond to pain usually becomes the bedrock on which we build our lives. Forgive the universe for its cruel and unexplained inflictions on you. Have you seen that 2010 TV ad in which a man riding a Bajaj Avenger on a mountainous terrain forgives everyone as he goes along? If not, look it up, and be like that character. Forgive them all.
More importantly, do not steal yourself away from feeling joy because of the nagging guilt (that might exist) which asks — how can I be happy now that this has happened? Do not question your capacity to feel joy and don’t feel guilty for full-throated laughter. In fact, seek out ways in which you can laugh loudly. We don’t laugh anymore no matter what the data says about the use of the laughing emoji. Laugh aloud. The dichotomy of our lives underlines that we are condemned to feel both sorrow and joy together. Experiencing both together is what makes us human. This is why we still have celebrations in one place while war wages in another. This is why under the same hospital roof life is brought into this world and life departs from it. This is why after the breaking apart of the Earth, the ground still grows whatever it can. Grief and joy are two sides of living. The faster you accept this, the easier some of this living will become.
Does either of you think that having a romantic partner would make this better? Is that why you mention being in relationships or growing babies? Maybe. Maybe not. If you feel the yearning for a romantic relationship or for giving birth, don’t hold yourself back from either. Life is too short to sit around wondering what might happen. These days there are multiple ways to meet new people and though overwhelming, if you think you can emotionally handle it, go for it. Sign up on a dating app, go to physical meets of a hobby you enjoy, sign up for travel packages with like-minded people. Put yourself out there and see what happens. Maybe you will meet someone similar who knocks your socks off or meet someone who is so different from you that your head sparks fireworks. Maybe it won’t work for a while and you’ll end up blocking a whole bunch of people. But it’s really simple – until you don’t try, you will never know.
Don’t live in the world of not-knowing. It is a world of make-believe, doesn’t supply any positive outcomes, and renders you inert. Keep moving. Find out if what you’re seeking is out there, balance your grief alongside, tend to your own heart like that of your inner child, and every day seek a new way of looking at this gorgeous mess of a life that we live. There’s no other way to do it, Luna and AK. There is no other way to do it.
Love,
Jasmine
Dear Jasmine is a fortnightly column by an anonymous writer. If any of you want to send in questions, please send them to Jasmine here.