#LifeAfterLoss: What My Parents’ Death Taught Me About Grief?

Change is inevitable. But how well do we take this in our stride? Rather do we really accept it wholeheartedly. In my experience, I would say it is the most difficult to accept any sort of change, until you’re left with no other option. 


It doesn’t sound uplifting. But trust me life is hard, damn hard. It doesn’t care whether you’re able to cope up with it or not, it would just go ahead and do its thing. Screw you up. No matter how crass this sounds, but that is the truth which can’t be ignored. 


Change is pleasant at times and at times, sucks the life out of you. Especially when someone is going through the grief of coping with the loss of a near and dear one’s life. Death of a closed one, jolts the living daylights out of you. I know this for sure because I have experienced it twice in my 28 years of life. 


Parents are the source of our lives. Not saying this from a biological point of view, but in an encompassing manner. Loss of parents’ lives creates a major vacuum in our lives. A void which can never be filled and it simply keeps deepening. Losing my mother at the age of 16 and father at 28, life seems pretty harsh and it is. 



I have observed this from the experiences and of course the turmoil I have been through. Grief is a funny feeling. Funny, because I don’t seem to relate with grief, when a disaster strikes. It really wrecks me  up when life is  moving at a normal pace. It looks perfectly alright and you’re going about carrying out your daily chores, right then, it hits you out of nowhere. 


I can vouch for this, people in India, glorify being strong in the times of grief. “Death is inevitable,” “and you have to keep going.” “Don’t drown yourself in this grief.” “Get back to life,” and other such genuine pieces of advice is given with straight face and frankly with somewhat genuine concern. What we lack is pushing people to accept their grief and go through the process. No matter how hard, painful and taxing it might be. You have to do it. I had to do it. 


There’s no shortcut to this process. Going through the dark passage is your only way to find light at the end of the tunnel. We encourage people to move on. But there is no way you could do that, if you don’t experience the grief in its entirety. 


Avoiding talking about the dead, in front of the bereaved person, not letting the person go through the process of grief and come out of it naturally; there are many instances where we make it almost impossible for someone going through grief to experience it peacefully. 


What worked for me? Well, soaking in my grief and not letting others decide when I should get out of it and how I should do that. 


West has been evolving with concepts to address grief in people and the coping mechanism. Self help groups are the biggest known source of finding solace and connecting with like-minded people. Although here’s a fresh take towards no bullshit attitude for tackling grief. 


Dinner Party organises potluck dinners to get under one roof, persons who have experienced substantial loss. They get together to connect and talk ways to thrive in life. 


No cheesy lines, but honest and open discussions on tackling with grief and how it affects our daily lives. And boy it does affect a lot. 


“Be strong.” 


This has been thrown toward me so casually and frequently, I would rather be weak and cry my heart out. Instead of bottling up my grief and putting up a facade of a strong woman. 


In order to be strong you have to be weak first. Weakness is the way to strength; you have to go through fear to get to the point of bravery. It’s just how it is. So let’s stop glorifying the need to remain strong, when we are grief stricken from inside. It a disaster recipe for breaking down bad in the long run.