Grieving nanu’s death from afar
I never got to utter the words, “Goodbye nanu, I love you.” It feels surreal — as if she’s disappeared into the mist of hours, her memory ringing through the void of time.
And then it hits me: I’ll never hear my grandmother call my name again and my heart aches, my gut churns. Do I ever really get to say goodbye?
Living in Whitby, I was thousands of kilometres away when I heard news of my nanu’s passing on Nov. 4. She passed away in Pabna, Bangladesh, which also happened to be her hometown, a place surrounded by grief.
In Bangladesh, COVID-19 cases have surpassed more than 1.5 million, with nearly 30,000 deaths as of December. During our phone calls early into the pandemic, nanu told me she would hear announcements from the local mosque and from people on passing rickshaws, brandishing a mic and speaker, announcing a list of names, some she even knew, who died due to the virus. The names rang through her neighbourhood daily.
My nanu moved back to Bangladesh in January 2020 from New York City, where she emigrated in 2005 to be with my aunt and her family. She was excited to spend her final years in her birth country with her youngest sister, but by March 2020, the pandemic had gone global, separating even those with means from returning home.
So, like many others, we were forced to rely on Facebook and WhatsApp calls. Since I was a teenager, every phone call we shared always ended with her saying “Bhalo thako. Sustha thako. Abar pore kotha hobe, khoda hafez,” before we hung up. It roughly translates from Bangla to English as, “stay well, stay healthy, we will talk again. God be with you” — and I would repeat it back to her. It would become our last exchange, over a phone call.
I told her throughout the pandemic how I would make plans to visit her in Bangladesh when border restrictions and health measures were less restricted. She was also ready to come out of the pandemic, to socialize and live her final years and had even recently received both doses of the COVID-19 vaccine. But a sudden deterioration of the last two months of her life changed her course. We did not anticipate we would lose her this quickly. We thought we had more time.
As I write this, I know I do not alone share the burden of grief, dealing with a loved one’s death across the world. Pandemic or no pandemic, it’s a common experience faced by immigrants or those separated by borders — where the only means of staying in touch is through pixels on a screen or by phone call.
As much as it stings to think about, I was afraid of losing this moment to reflect on the incredible life my nanu had and gave me amid all the continued grief. Hoping to take a moment to be still with my sorrow, I reached out to a grief counsellor for advice.
“Well first, no, you’re not alone,” Karima Joy, a registered social worker with a private practice, focusing on grief and bereavement experiences and marginalization said to me.
Joy said that “many people have been robbed of their final goodbyes.”
There are no quick fixes for grief, Joy adds. “Because (grief) is not linear.” Instead, we need to learn to “oscillate” between grief and present life where we allow ourselves to “digest” and familiarize ourselves with our grief.
“It’s normal to sometimes be in the pits of grief and then maybe in an hour, you’re feeling differently and you’re ready to go do groceries and then maybe you’re crying in the shower and then maybe you’re zoning out to Netflix, that is absolutely normal if that is your process ... instead of it being about closure, how do we reframe that into how we can digest grief?” she said.
She suggests that we find creative ways to “honour our loved ones” and to “honour our grief,” such as producing our own rituals to remember our loved ones’ lives. This can then lead to “continuing bonds” in the process of our grief, said Joy, which is “about how you continue the relationship with (your loved ones) in a new way.”
What I took away from this experience is that no matter how painful it is, it’s important to take the time to remember those you love. I'm doing this now by listening to music and watching movies nanu liked. In this way, I feel as though I’m creating new memories of her.
My nanu’s name is Nadira Khanum. She was named after the five petalled flower, parul, native to the Indian subcontinent. And just as beautiful and vibrant as the flower, my nanu was an artist. She was trained as a child in a variety of classical Indian dances, including Bharatanatyam and even after shattering her hip bone to pieces in an accident as a teen, she never lost rhythm. She would teach me as a child to move, despite my two left feet.
But growing up in Bangladesh in the 40s and 50s (then part of India and later called East Pakistan), also meant witnessing human suffering. My nanu lived through the Second World War, the Partition of India and the Bangladesh Liberation War of 1971. She survived polio, the smallpox epidemics, a famine and a military dictatorship. Seeing all this destruction, she made sure to dedicate time to healing and giving back in any way she could, from feeding those facing hunger to visiting patients at the local hospital and even stopping to greet animals. She was thankful for life.
She also gave life, giving birth to three kids who gave birth to seven grandchildren and two greatgrandchildren that will forever be blessed for her gift of life. I am who I am because I knew her love and I shall carry her with me until it comes time for me to go.
The wound of a loved one's death during the pandemic will bleed for a long time. My nanu’s death will be a deep, traumatic wound that my family will manage to caress over time, eventually turning into a scab, then hard scar tissue. Never to forget, but to cherish.