A writer’s pain: My grandmother helped me through grief. The pandemic may not let me see her again
‘In a way, it was my grandmother who taught me how to see the world through a writer’s eyes.’ wallpaperflare.com
A heart attack does not look like what it does in the movies. My father never clutched his chest, never cried out in pain. He simply fell flat on his back, looked up at the sky in wide-eyed wonder, and let out a sound I can still hear at night sometimes, when I’m struggling to fall asleep.
In 2009, we went on a family vacation to a hill station in Madhya Pradesh known for its dramatic waterfalls and pristine jungle. The only hospital in the whole area was twenty minutes away from our forest location, a small army unit with one doctor and a seldom, if ever, used defibrillator. Death was called quickly. They wrapped my father up in hospital bed sheets and put him in a freezer.