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

My Sister Sumi was the eldest amongst us siblings and, after my mum passed away, she became a second mother to us all.

My first real memory of her was when she returned from India, where she had been sent to school in Vadodara by our mum and dad. To this day, I do not fully know why they made that decision, but I am sure it was done with love and what they believed was in her best interests.

From the moment she came back into our lives, she was always there for us. Caring. Protective. Doting on every one of us in her own quiet way.

She had a deep love for cooking. I still remember one occasion in Kampala when she made toasted sandwiches with a potato filling. It sounds simple now, but in those days it felt unusual and special, almost like a little piece of magic from her kitchen.

Sumi also loved reading. There was nearly always a radio playing softly in the background with old Hindi songs drifting through the house. Even today, whenever I hear songs from the 1960s, my mind immediately goes back to her. The music carries memories of warmth, family, and a time that now feels so distant.

She was one of those people whose presence brought comfort without needing attention. She gave so much of herself to others, often quietly and without recognition.

My greatest regret is that when she took a turn for the worse during Covid, I was unable to see her in hospital. Those were such cruel times for families everywhere. She reached out to me with a garbled text message. The words were unclear, but somehow I understood exactly what she meant. It was enough for me to know that she was thinking of me.

Even harder to bear was the fact that, because of the Covid restrictions, we were not allowed to attend her funeral. There was no final goodbye, no embrace, no chance to stand together as a family and honour her life in the way she deserved.

For a long time, that sadness stayed with me. It still does in many ways. Some losses never fully settle in the heart because they feel unfinished.

Recently, on the anniversary of her passing, so many memories came flooding back. But alongside the sadness came gratitude. Gratitude that we had someone like Sumi in our lives at all.

I will never forget her smile, her gentle counsel, or the unconditional love she had for her family. Some people leave behind possessions. Others leave behind memories. Sumi left behind love, and that is something time can never take away.

— Bipin J

Tejal’s Story

Losing my mum changed me, I’m not the person I was and I will never be that version of me again. Losing her felt like my entire world was thrown off its axis. I didn’t realise how much she used to straighten me during a storm, or centre me when I felt lost. A few days with her, just pottering around and spending time with her reset me in ways I never really understood until she was gone. Grief is all consuming, it comes in waves, some days you laugh at a funny memory and then on others you sob at a different one.  I kept thinking about how I would never hear her voice or laugh again, smell her scent, hold her hand, give her a hug, paint her nails and just be with her. And if I had known the last time I did all those things was the last time I would do them, I would soak in every drop of being around her one…last….time.  

For just over 3 years after she passed, I existed. I went through the motions of waking up, brushing, showering, working, but my days became a checklist and I just got through the day by ticking off the to do list. 6 months after my brother and his wife had their little girl, it tripped a switch in my head and my heart. I thought about how mum would feel if she could see what I was doing to myself, and I looked at myself through the eyes of my niece and realised I didn’t want to be that person anymore. I miss my mum every single day but she wouldn’t want me to just exist, she would want me to live, and she would want me to be happy.

People don’t know how to talk about someone dying, or what to say to a person who is grieving. The truth is, there is not a lot you can say but there are a lot of cliches that a grieving person DOES NOT want to hear; “It was their time to go” “We are all going to die one day” “They are in a better place now”. If these are the only things that come to mind when faced with a grieving person, “I’m sorry for your loss” is enough because it is just that. It’s a loss of a life that meant the world, it’s a loss of all the things I didn’t get to do with mum, a loss of the experiences I would go through and not be able to share with her, the lost calls, meals, messages, birthdays, celebrations and everything in between.

Before she became our mum, she was a daughter, a sister, a friend and while I hate to admit it, I took her presence for granted. I only saw my mum, I didn’t see the other hats she wore for the other relationships she had. I think about what I would say to her if I could go back in time. I would take a million photos, I would record her talking to me about anything, I would ask her about her life before she got married and what her favourite memory is. I cherish the time I got to spend with her before and after I got married.

If I had to sum up in one word what grief has taught me, I would say it’s strength. To wake up every day and live life like a part of you hasn’t gone with them. To go to work and carry on like any other day, to be in social situations when it’s the last place you want to be. Waking up and trying to live a life you used to live but without someone who anchored you through every up and down requires strength. You don’t realise how strong you are until it’s the only choice you have.

By Tejal M.

Bipin’s Story

My first real experience of grief came when I lost my Dad.

It was Easter time in 1992 when we learned he had suffered a stroke. I went to visit him at his flat. I can still see the room now. Quiet. Heavy. The curtains half drawn against the afternoon light.

Dad was lying in bed looking pale and exhausted. He motioned for me to come closer. I leaned in, expecting him to ask for water or medicine, but instead he looked directly at me and said softly, “I want you to take care of everyone from now on.”

At the time, I simply nodded.

I do not think I truly understood the weight of those words.

Within minutes he was rushed back to hospital after suffering more strokes. Those were the last words he ever spoke to me.

For years afterwards, grief meant shock to me. The disbelief that someone who had always seemed strong could suddenly disappear from your world. But as I grew older, grief became something deeper.

It became regret.

Not regret for anything cruel or terrible. Regret for not asking more questions. For not understanding the burdens my father carried. He had lost his own dad at a young age and had known hardship long before I was born. I was a sickly child with severe asthma. Money was tight. Medical bills must have weighed heavily on him, yet as a child I never saw any of it.

Children rarely do.

Looking back now, my heart aches when I think about what life must have been like for him. The pressure. The worry. The quiet sacrifices that parents make without announcing them to the world.

Then grief visited me again when my mum became seriously ill a few years later.

She was in hospital and struggling badly. Her heart was failing. I went to see her with my wife. As I turned the corner and saw her lying there, my heart skipped. She looked so thin and pale. Tubes ran beneath her nose as she fought for each breath.

She called me closer.

In a weak voice she said, “I want you to stop fighting for me and let me go. Look after everyone.”

Then she removed a small pendant of our God from around her neck and handed it to me.

I remember making an excuse to leave the room for a moment, but really I went to a small garden nearby and cried alone. Inside the room, my wife sat beside my mum singing bhajans softly to comfort her.

Not long afterwards, she passed away.

As I look back on it now, I realise they left behind a legacy to be proud of.

Not money or possessions.

Something far greater.

Strength. Sacrifice. Family. Duty. Love.

The older I get, the more I understand the weight they carried so quietly.

Grief still comes and goes. Sometimes unexpectedly. A memory. A smell. A song. A passing thought when the world has gone quiet.

But through it all, I remember that a promise was made.

“Look after everyone.”

I have tried my very best to keep it.

That, more than anything, is what grief means to me.

By Bipin J.

During her illness, before she became bedbound, she had a chair she always sat in. I had mine too — to her right, just within her line of vision. If I moved to another seat, she would complain. Not dramatically. Just enough to let me know.

She needed to see me. After forty years, I suppose I needed to be seen.

That chair is still there. I don’t sit in it.

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I used to think grief was something you went through when you lost someone very dear to you. But grief is more than that. So much more.

It’s not just losing loved ones. Grief wears many faces.

For the first two years after losing my wife, I was consumed by guilt. Guilt from being alive. Guilt from the feeling that I hadn’t done enough. Guilt from that niggling voice asking whether I could have pursued different avenues of treatment. I still feel it — to a lesser extent now — but when it resurfaces, the pain is intense. After a great deal of hard self-searching, I’ve learned to ride whatever storm comes. But it took time. It took work.

Dealing with negative thoughts, with difficult feelings, and with the grief that surrounds us in everyday life — that is no small thing.

Over the years I have lost both parents, my in-laws, and a very dear sister, who passed away soon after my wife. The recovery time from one loss to the next was very short. Other losses — work colleagues, friends, neighbours — I got through in their own separate ways. The pain varied. Some grief was short-lived; some lasted months. Why that was, I will never fully know.

So when I lost my wife, I thought it would be the same. I would deal with it. I always had.

The knot in my throat told me otherwise.

What surprised me most was this: the losses of people I had loved deeply — my parents, my sister — hadn’t broken me the way losing her did. And I don’t know why. Is it the nature of that particular love? Is it the length of a life built together? Or is grief simply too complex to be measured or compared?

I may never know. But I’ve stopped expecting it to make sense.

Those first days and weeks brought a sadness I had never experienced — one that engulfed me in ways I hadn’t thought possible. Especially when the mourners had gone home. When my son and daughter had returned to their lives. When I came back to a house so quiet you could hear a pin drop.

Forty years of memories filled that silence. The laughter — always the laughter. The food choices, the clothing, the smells around the house, the TV programmes we watched together. Small things. Enormous things. The list is endless.

Just like grief.

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Some days I walk past her chair and barely notice it. Other days it stops me completely. I have never moved it. I don’t think I ever will.

She needed to see me. I’m still here.

–Anil J