The Cure for Grief

Fictional healing, and a writer to watch

Three weeks ago I watched my grandmother slowly withdraw from the world and die. The act of breathing was no longer a given. I watched her and willed every inhale. The squeeze of her clammy hand in mine, bones strong beneath plastic flesh. I laughed at her bedside with my brother, hoping she could absorb the threads of stories that flowed between us, their feeling if not their meaning. She died, and we launched ourselves into the admin that comes with death, telling each other she’d had a good life and she wasn’t in pain and it was good she’d died without a long decline. But still, she died, and we were left behind. 

I came back to work, and a strange thing happened. I had agreed to edit a book a few months back, thinking it was going to be a travel narrative with strands of self-discovery and mental health. But it turned out to be a novel about losing someone you love and how to survive it. This manuscript that landed on my desk only days after my grandmother’s death allowed me to cry and to feel connected to the grief of others, the universality of this most human of emotions. As the great Hilary Mantel said in her Reith Lectures, ‘we are the animals who mourn.’

I also had a feedback session with an author in which we discussed bereavement; as so often happens in book publishing, the personal sliding its foot in the door, unwilling to be shut out. This author, like me, had taken on the task of writing the eulogy for their loved one.

As I spoke to some of the people my grandmother had touched with her life, and started weaving their memories into narrative, I felt both further away from and closer to her. Each story brought either recognition or a kind of prosopagnosia. She had left very little in the way of written evidence herself. She was a doer, not a writer. She loved with deeds, not words. Though she saw my writing as a gift.

Writing about her, I realised something. To write is indeed a gift; a gift not only to the reader, as we so often assume, but to the writer. The joy of finding, through an almost alchemical process, a sense of things. An honour, too, for we mould the narrative through our words. As Mantel says, ‘commemoration is an active process. Desperate for the truth, and sometimes for comforting illusion.’ Commemorating my dead felt a little of both.

I said that I’d use this platform to shine a light on some of the talented authors I am working with, and now feels like the right time to do this. So this is an excerpt from the above-mentioned author, Sucharita Sethi’s novel. It is currently unagented, and though the author isn’t looking for representation quite yet, she would love expressions of interest via me. 

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FINDING NIRVANA

Nirvana Flynn is so lonely that she hallucinates answerphone messages and talks to her doorknob. (Shere Khan is his name, in case you wondered.) Since her mother died it’s safe to say she’s been going quietly mad. But when a letter arrives from beyond the grave enclosing a plane ticket to India and the beguilingly named Hotel of Contentment, she is forced to take a leap into the unknown. Luckily she won’t be alone there for long. 

With a cast of lovable characters and set in the gorgeous beaches of Goa, FINDING NIRVANA is a wise and witty novel about finding ourselves again after losing someone we thought we couldn’t live without, and the transformative power of love.

***

Are you ok?” Veer asks getting straight to the point. 

Setting the tray down next to my journal, he pours me a steaming cup of coffee and adds a splash of milk. I take the outstretched cup and nod, too tired to speak. Ignoring the inquisitive gleam in his eye, I take a biscuit and dunk it in my coffee.

“I’ve never understood the British preoccupation with dipping biscuits in a beverage. What’s the point, it just crumbles,” he says in bemusement. 

“It’s an art form. You dip gently, whip it out at exactly the right moment, thereby avoiding the crumble and savouring the moistness.” 

For a moment, the fatigue and loneliness melts away.

“Clearly,” he chuckles. 

I’ve let the biscuit soak a fraction too long, and it disintegrates into the coffee as he’d predicted. Minutes pass while we sip our coffee in silence, until finally, I crack.

“I miss her Veer. The party, all the laughter, the families, it just reminded me that I’m alone.” 

He doesn’t argue or console but shoots me a look of such understanding that I want to howl.

“I take these small steps and feel I’m making progress. But then put me in a group of happy, connected people and I’m back to being broken and alone.”

His eyes glisten as he puts his cup down on the tray and then draws me in a hug. I sob silently into his shoulder. It isn’t until I feel a drop of water on my neck, that I realise he is crying too.

“I’m sorry Veer, I didn’t mean to upset you as well,” I hiccup and draw away, instantly guilty at causing him distress.

“Grief is like a silent stranger in the room. Sometimes lurking in the background but always hovering on the periphery of happiness. Meeting you and Hans has made me happy, but a huge part of me is still missing. I miss my brother too.” 

We exchange a bleak look. Who am I kidding? Coming to India was supposed to be the answer, but here I am, crying into the shoulder of someone who’s as lonely and sad as I am. 

Then I realise. I have a shoulder to cry on. And, at least for a second, the stranger in the room recedes. 

Photo by Huzeyfe Turan on Unsplash