When I first imagined this series, I didn’t expect family members to step forward the way they did. Grief is personal. It sits in places we don’t always let others see. And yet, one by one, five people from our family wrote honestly about the hardest things they have ever carried — with Bipin finding the courage to write not once but twice, about his own grief and then about our sister Sumi. In doing so, they showed me that we still look after each other. That, more than anything, is what this series became.
The piece that stopped me was Pragna’s. I was there in those days after we lost Sumi, turning up after shifts, doing what I could within the restrictions Covid forced on all of us. When I read what she wrote, she hit me somewhere I wasn’t expecting. She put words to something I had felt but couldn’t say.
To everyone who has read this series — thank you for staying the course. I know it isn’t easy. Reading about grief when you have lived it yourself opens wounds that never fully close. That you kept reading means more than I can say.
We wrote these pieces because we loved the people we lost. I hope that comes through on every page.
— Anil J
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