Grief doesn’t speak English in my house.

It appears unannounced, wrapped in my grandmother’s old dupatta, with a faint scent of her

perfume and the kind of incense that never leaves the folds of silk. It doesn’t knock, it

lingers. Between quiet stares across the dining table. In the half-sentences that trail off mid-

air. In cups of chai they go cold because someone forgot to add sugar.

I’ve read about it, on crisp white pages in classrooms that echo more than they comfort.

“Stages of Grief,” “Bereavement,” and “Loss and Adjustment,” between the DSM and lecture slides, I started to believe that understanding meant healing. That if I could name the ache, I could fix it.

But grief, I’ve learned, isn’t a wound you bandage. It’s a room you learn to sit inside, even

when the lights go out.

When my grandmother passed away, no one said the word “depression” to my dad. They said "teri mummy tereko aise rote we dekh kar khush nahi hogi." When he stopped eating or baking after she died, they said "time lagta hai", it takes time. Everything was always just a phase.

But no one ever said: this is what grief looks like when it doesn’t leave your soul.

Sometimes, I wonder how are feelings get lost in the life we live in.

Some people cry for help because grief is not their cup of tea.

How often people think that if dad is silent, that means he is fighting with his feelings, and

yes, he is, but all alone.

In college, we are taught to hold an open space for people around us. But sometimes, I forget to make room for my feelings. To admit that I, too, have stared at ceilings at 1 AM,

wondering if healing is a myth we tell ourselves so we don’t fall apart completely. Even if I

am trying to settle others down, each day I am also fighting my own battle.

And yet, we all are being comforted with words like You are not alone by people around him.

That someone, somewhere, comes like a ray of sunlight every day. That someone folds a

shawl left behind and keeps it close. That someone listens to an old voice note just to

remember how they laughed.

Healing doesn’t always come in therapy rooms. Sometimes it comes in stories. In poetry. In

remembering someone’s laughter without crying. Breathing a little easier when you pass their favorite spot on the road.

And grief?

It doesn’t always need to be explained.

Sometimes, it just needs to be felt, in the language it first arrived in.

Author- Khushi Chaudhary