Closure and Grief
I walked past Grand Central Terminal, on my way to the Nepali consulate in New York. The consulate closes at 1 everyday so I had little time to wander. I remembered the path because I had been there before, which meant that I could enjoy the city and its buildings for a change, my eyes free from google maps.
I passed a homeless lady, her hair discolored by dirt, her eyes heavy. Intoxicated, I assumed but this was nothing new because New York is full of the homeless, specially Grand Central that invites a community of homeless under its picturesque chandelier roofs. A few more steps and there was a lady who lay flat on the road, a feet from the sidewalk. My first thought was to walk faster. I did not want an interaction with a homeless person begging for money, but as my eyes began to register her clean pant-suit in yellow, a man who walked in front of me stopped and asked, “ lady are you okay?”
She shook left and right. I saw her headphones a feet away from her head, and the kind samaritan had now placed her bag under her head and tilted her body. She was having a seizure. It struck me that I had walked away. Walked away from helping someone because I could not distinguish her from the homeless accosting you for money. It wasn’t the money I was afraid of though. It was the intimidation imagined, a hustling of bags perhaps, an imagined physical threat.
Guilt over-washed my being. What has become of me, I thought. So cruel, so heartless. I texted my husband about what to do, and my eyes needed closure so I watched from the sidelines, as a group gathered. Someone called 911, another offered extra tissues from Starbucks, and someone else wiped her face. I did not see if it was vomit or froth. I was too afraid to get too close.
But it was more than fear. It was the feeling of a vulture preying on the sick, especially when the group that had gathered began to snap photos. I did not want to get closer because I did not want to treat her illness as a subject of entertainment, a momentary excitement to the day, but here I am writing about her. The irony.
I left the scene when the cops showed up. She was in safe hands, I thought. And as I walked to the consulate, my next destination I thought about how only a day before I had attended an uncle’s funeral on zoom and found a sense of closure. Then too, I had the same sense of preying on the sadness of others, because I did not know him well enough for the grief to be mine. The last text I had sent him was still on unread — it was, “Namaste uncle, I am in Chicago for the last week. We are saying prayers for your health today. You will get better. Keep faith.”
He had called two weeks ago begging for any help possible because his health wasn’t improving. He wanted to know if transferring hospitals would help, if my husband could help. We had to tell him that he was a still a resident doctor with no such powers, and the protocol for COVID patients would remain the same regardless of the hospital he switched to. It turns out that he did switch, at least he had that, a last wish of sorts. I watched on zoom as his wife wept, as I packed my husband’s graduation gift furiously because he would be home anytime then. I watched a family torn apart, their lives never the same again, as I packed more furiously, unable to process two emotions together — of grief and love.
Later that day, we watched my husband’s graduation on zoom — the pandemic was the culprit again, and we could not attend live. Another closure but a happy one. But in my husband’s face, I found the loss of his mother. Not related to COVID but fresh, recent. Another momentous day that she could not be a part of. But with love, I do not feel like a vulture preying, I do not feel like a bystander. Rather his grief is personal, his sighs are mine, the emptiness in his eyes, also mine, and his suffering, both of ours.
Sometimes I think this is the year when the ocean of grief has been unleashed for us to bear. But they also have those many sayings about how after every dark night the sun rises, how there is always light at the end of the tunnel. I don’t know though. I sometimes wonder, are there sunrises to look forward to or is this what adulthood was supposed to look like all along?