“Thomas Edison’s last words were: ‘It is very beautiful over there.’ I don’t know where there is, but I believe it is somewhere, and hope it’s beautiful.”
JG, Looking For Alaska
Letters to my dead family. With things I wish I could’ve said.
One for love
do you all have that one unfulfilled wish? like that one wish that you really badly want but know can never come true?
It’s meeting my nanaji for me. Unfortunately, my granddad passed away before I was born. And that sucks a lot for me, having a grandparent that you never got to see or hug and hold hands with. But I grew up listening to stories about him, how heroic he was. On Feb 14th, when there’s love everywhere, the small town he is from all lined up wearing black, shut down stores so they could bid him farewell. I still visit his town and get treated like royalty and everyone rushes to me to tell tales about how kind he was and how loving and caring and forgiving he was.
I want to be like him.
I hear so many stories about how he wouldn’t frown and help everyone so much financially, emotionally, in any way. I hear stories about how he rescued my grandma’s sister as she was falling down from a waterfall. He didn’t think twice, this man! He just jumped right in.
He was so so brave. I want to be like him.
Nanaji, not meeting you is something I have felt sad about since a kid but never really expressed. I’m sure you’re in jannath for everything you’ve done and for how much people love you.
It’s funny how someone I have never even met can inspire. me this much. I hope I could’ve met you.
One for loss
I think I miss you. I barely even knew you but it’s making more than a sad difference that you’re gone. I wish I could’ve held your hand when you left us. Or even have been able to be there. It’s been a couple of months but it always keeps coming back in a loop. So I’m going to tell you now a godspeed I held back:
“Khudahaafiz ammijaan. Jhatthan rhao. Ab tumhe accha bharakkoo mitthaa khaa sakte:’)”
And one to make you think, “what the fuck.”
You’ve left me with nothing more than a saved contact now. I keep coming back to this. I told you I was coming to meet you. I told you. I picked out my dress and went to sleep to come meet you the next day and steal ice cream and play w catto. I woke up to my mom screaming and crying. I wore that dress to your funeral then. I was going to meet you and talk to you and eat delicious food with you that day. You could’ve waited for two hours, couldn’t you. Why didn’t you wait for me. My brother hasn’t been the same ever since. He’s only two years older than me. Please come back.
I think I should be telling you goodbye now, it’s been a good couple of months. But I need you back for my brother. I hope you’re looking over him. I hope you’re w dadhiya and dadhuba in jannath ab. Man I can’t bring myself to tell you goodbye. Take care, Chan Maamma.
.
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It was plenty weird, losing an uncle and then just a month after, losing a grandparent. And to have a grandparent that has inspired me so much, and yet I still haven’t met. And daddhiya and daddhuba, you were like grandparental figures, I miss you sometimes. You saw me in 4th grade the last right? I wish you could see me now. I think you are. Hope heaven’s a happy place for all of you and you’re chilling together<3
Mystery, is all. 