My dearest friends, my readers, I come back to you after the longest four weeks of my life with a broken heart. As I write this, it’s been eighteen days since I lost my friend, my longtime companion, my grandfather. We lost him to a peaceful goodbye; he slept his way out of this world.
On a cold Friday morning, my husband and I were brewing our morning coffees to fill our Yetis and go for our usual weekend morning stroll by the neighborhood beach. My phone rang in the bedroom where I ran to get it, I had waken up with a knot in my stomach and I knew this phone call was not going to be good news. “Good morning, mom!” I said in a chipper voice. On the other end was what seemed like the carcass of my mother trying to speak through her, who somehow found the strength to tell me “He’s gone. I woke up and he’s cold as ice.” I knew exactly who she was talking about, but I refused to believe it. “Who?” I asked, knowing damn well the answer, and still came the heart wrenching words I was fearing.
My body started to shake, and I could feel the warmth of my tears starting to stream down my face when an uncontrollable sound came out of my throat. I was screaming, weeping, saying unintelligible words. I could feel my heart breaking into a million pieces.
I told my husband what was going on and I knew I had to start packing to go to my mother’s house who lived an hour away. The house where my grandpa’s dead corpse – redundant, I know – laid peacefully. My husband and I scrambled to pack whatever the hell we packed, by the time I looked at the suitcase that night, none of what we packed made sense. We got our cats into their crates and hired a driver to give us a ride to the place I was dreading the most. While we were awaiting our driver’s arrival, all I could think about was, the next step. We need to go to city hall, we need to get the approval to bury him, we need to do it today because guess what my dear reader? I live in a country where the corpse, if the person died peacefully, doesn’t go to a morgue awaiting their burial but rather awaits them in that same house they died in. I was told by my driver that day, even if it takes up to three days to get the permit, the corpse will be THERE. It didn’t make sense, and I felt this rage inside of me. I was so angry at this unbelievable situation; how could they do that to the families?
My anger didn’t stop there. When I arrived at my mother’s house, both my mother and my aunt forced me into my grandfather’s bedroom to see his dead body. To this day, I don’t know why. And there he was, the invincible man I’ve known my whole life laid there. Blue, cold, with his hands under his face and on his side. For a minute, I waited for him to wake up. I wanted to say, “let’s give it some time, he’ll wake up.” But I didn’t. I wanted to believe that he would wake up, my grandpa loved cruel jokes and attention and I wanted to believe that this was one of those moments. My anger just grew stronger as I watched my mother weeping and watching him. How could she not cover his face? How was this fair to him? How was this fair to me, to see him in this state when all I wanted was to keep an image of his happy face? I grabbed the sheet on top of him to cover his face when my mom asked me not to and I said, “you do realize it’s a sin to treat the dead like this, right?” I honestly didn’t know if it was or not, but the only way to get my mom to do whatever you wanted her to is to use religion.
I went downstairs and into the kitchen where I fell onto the floor weeping and shaking. My breath was so shallow, I didn’t even know if I was breathing. My aunt came in to tell me to pull it together, because “I wasn’t allowed to cry in front of my mother, she’s sensitive and going through a lot.” I wiped my tears as if it were an automatic response, and it was. Since I was a child, I was told to keep it together for my mom because it was too much for her. But in that moment, all I could think was, “what about me?”
I pulled myself together and went to talk to my mother. I tried rationalizing her by telling her that we needed to get a move on, we had paperwork to deal with, we had to find a spot in the cemetery, we had to find a burier, we had to, we had to, we had to……
My grandpa was Christian, my mom is Muslim, and I am…. Existing. I don’t know what I am. I do know however that I respect both religions and I would honor both of them for my family’s sake no matter what. The following of course ignited more fury in me, my mom was trying to bury him in a Muslim cemetery, which was something he didn’t want. He was a devout catholic. Thankfully, the laws here don’t allow religions to mix even in death. Which meant, we were going to honor his wishes and bury him in the cemetery he wanted to rest in. There’s only one Christian cemetery where my mom lives, where my grandpa lived, because I live in a Muslim country. We had to find a burier that day and start digging his grave so he would be buried in the morning, so his corpse wouldn’t sit at home. Dead. I’m still angry goddammit, about the fact that we all had to endure that, including him. Forget about getting paperwork done the day of in my country, even in death. In one city hall, we were told to go to different city hall, which we had actually gone to first, who then told us to go back to the second city hall. Yes, that’s how it goes. When telling the woman working there that we were sent here, she said “I can’t help you.” We asked what we could do, and she responded with, “I don’t care that your father is dead. Not my problem.” Those were her words to my mom who absolutely lost it right there and then. I don’t blame her. I won’t bore you with the details, but after 4 hours we finally got that paperwork and we somehow rallied and found a burier.
Back home, I was faced with the reality that everything was done and all I was left with was my emotions. Emotions I wasn’t allowed to show or feel in the presence of my mom. Aunts, their husbands, and their kids came, and they all went to my mother’s side. Not one single person asked me how I felt. Every time a tear would fall without my realizing, I was told to keep it together. “You can’t cry. Do you want to break your mom’s heart? Do you want to make her feel worse?” I swallowed it up like a knife and suppressed my emotions by obsessively cooking for everyone.
The next day, we buried him. I still wasn’t allowed to cry. “You’re the strong one in this family. Keep it together.” Those were the constant words I heard throughout the heartbreaking loss of my best friend, of the only father figure in my life. It didn’t matter that I had a panic attack in the corner of the house when they brought his coffin downstairs, it didn’t matter that the night before I didn’t sleep while I bawled, none of it mattered because I’m the strong one in the family. My husband, the love of my life, however offered me the safety of his arms where I could cry, I could talk about my favorite memories with my grandfather, and where I could be angry about the way I was treated by my own flesh and blood.
To this day, I’m angry. I’m angry that my mother monopolized the grief, I’m angry that I wasn’t allowed to fully mourn the loss of the person who taught me everything I know, I’m angry that I’m considered the strong one in the family, I’m angry. I’m just so angry.