She wasn’t gone, she was right there.

It has been around three weeks since my grandma passed away. And although all the rituals have been performed, ending with her ashes being submerged in the Ganges (according to Hindu rituals), there isn’t one bone in my body that can feel her absence.

I was seven when I lost my grandpa. I could reason with my age being a factor in my obliviousness to death and losing people. But now? I’m 19 years old, with full awareness about such things and yet, I can’t see a world where she doesn’t exist.

Maybe it hasn’t sunk in yet? That’s what I have been actively telling myself.

It’s not even as if I didn’t cry over her when they brought her home from the hospital, her cold body covered by white on the floor as everyone around her wept. I cried. But did I cry because I lost her?

I think I cried for the loss of all those who cried for her at that time. My mom, my aunt and my uncles who no better than orphaned kids at that moment.

I haven’t yet cried for my own loss.

I haven't because I can’t. She was right there, her eyes closed, asleep. She wasn’t gone, she was right there. They told me to touch her feet and I did, I felt her skin. She wasn’t gone, she was right there.

These rituals soon get over and they are taking her to the cremation grounds. My grandpa couldn’t go with her because how could he? What was there for him to see anymore? So all he did was stand in front of the house, watching that huge van with her body go as he waved.

He waved and waved till he couldn’t see the car anymore.

I cried for him.

The next few days were a blur. Relatives coming and bawling at what had happened. A few more days and we were talking about her, smiling at the memories with a bittersweet epiphany. Everyone missed her but no one believed she was truly gone enough to be missed.

I remember her scolding me every time I opened the fridge to look for something to eat. And I remember her always sitting in the air-conditioned room with a cold water bottle beside her to keep her company. She had a list of choice-words that she only spoke in front of her family.

But most of her last days that I remember are her asking if she’d be alright. If this disease would finally let go of her. If these rounds to the hospitals and doctors would end. And I remember everyone telling her yes, yes it will be over soon.

I remember myself saying the same, that she’ll be all good in no time.

And it did.

That innocent question of hers left strangling quite a few throats in its wake. She didn’t want to go to the hospital, she only went because we told her they would fix her right up. The ICU walls were closed for us in her last moments, no one was allowed to visit.

She died alone because she believed in our choices.

She died alone.

And I don’t know how long it would take for me to cry over that. Over the fact that I could’ve been there, to hold her hand and tell her not to be scared. That we were all waiting for her outside the ICU. That she wasn’t alone.