Aji

One would think that at twenty-two it would become seemingly easier to understand life. One would imagine that it gets easier and the strength one needs to cope with challenges increases with age. And while that may be true for most things, life can throw whatever curve balls at you but you are never truly prepared for losses- especially those of people around you.

Mentally its easy to understand that life has a expiry date and eventually death is inevitable. However, no matter how mentally prepared you are, emotionally you can never be prepared enough.

I lost my paternal grandmother yesterday. Mentally I think I was prepared. It was inevitable and I think most of us knew it was coming. But it doesn’t really hit you till it happens. It has been hours and hours since I was woken up to be told that Aji had passed on and even though it hasn’t fully sunk in and I still feel like she’s around its taking everything I have not to break down completely.

After spending the last seven years living with her I think I have enough memories to get me through a lifetime and yet they feel like they aren’t enough. I wish I could just hear her call my name one last time or wake up to her singing as I did for so many years. I wish that I could hear laugh while she slapped my hand as I played with her skin as I have since I was a child. I wish I could just smell that smell she had and I wish that I could hold her hand just one last time. I wish we could sit together and watch a Julie Andrews or Audrey Hepburn movie one last time- preferably Sound of Music or My Fair Lady, her favourites. I wish I could rest my head in her lap one last time as she patted it and told me stories.  But I can’t.

I know she is in a better place. I imagine her sitting on a swing, singing and laughing. I imagine her and Tata (my paternal grandfather) sitting together in a sunny lawn, him looking absolutely dapper as always smoking his pipe and her happy to be with him again. I imagine her playing Bridge and enjoying herself thoroughly. I imagine her and my Nana (even though I never met him) discussing intellectual things and reminiscing about Pakistan while they sit on rocking chairs. But mostly I imagine her sitting with both my grandfathers as they look down on all of us.

I feel lucky to have been able to spend so much time with her, not because she was my grandmother and she loved me, but mostly because she was an amazing person. Even though a lot of my memories are stories my parents have told me, I have learnt a lot from her in these many years that I remember. But what I loved the most and what I’ll miss the most is the way she smiled when I did something to make her happy- from sitting with her to stealing her walking stick and acting like her. She was a happy person, a soft person and a caring person, but mostly she was a person full of immense love.

I pray that she has found that happiness that she wanted and I hope that she will always be smiling down on me and the rest of her family. I hope that she has found peace wherever she is.

Aji, I will always love you. I will always miss you. But I know you are always with me and that I will never truly be alone or without you…