my aachi, my forever love

trigger warning: loss, trauma, suicide, genocide, war, grief

my aachi (grandmother), is the most resilient, headstrong, authentic person I know. she lost her eldest son, 12 or 13 at the time, due to a tragic lightning strike in eelam. his charred body dropped lifelessly right in front of her eyes. her second child and eldest daughter, died by suicide as a teenager and she never knew why. my thatha (grandfather), soon died shortly 6 months after from kidney failure, but I think, due to a broken heart as his eldest daughter was his favourite.

since then my aachi has been an incredible mother to her remaining 5 children, and beyond, including her sister’s & brother’s children and grandchildren. due to the abuse in schools in eelam, she dropped out in 3rd grade after her teacher rubbed out her fingerprint on the pavement. she can read and write tamil, but her written tamil is always a bit choppy. however, she is a literature nerd, reading multiples versions and iterations of the Mahabaratha and Ramayana, knowing literary nuances and having personal analyses for each author. she always told me she was “mokku” (dumb), because she never finished school. never once in my life did i ever think that about her. her extensive knowledge about land, agriculture (she has the greenest thumb), Tamil literature and idioms, spirituality, medicinal foods and herbs, ancestral knowledge, was beyond what I could ever conceive. loosing her, is a big loss to us ontologically.

she never knew her dad… since this story is pretty removed from me i’ll reveal but essentially her dad kind of fooled around with her moms cousin which basically led to stepcousin siblings??? her father fucked off somewhere just as she was born, after her mother’s cousin (step mom/aunt??) died by suicide. i know, it’s messed up. idk how many layers of intergenerational trauma plaques my existence.

she married my thatha at 16, as such were the times, and I believe had her eldest son shortly after. she raised five kids as a single mom in eelam during war and genocide, fleeing into the jungle at odd hours of the night to escape the army, especially as a mother with daughters. these are unshakeable experiences that live within you and your kin forever.

because of my uncle’s sacrifices, my aachi and her kids were sponsored to canada, however aachi’s struggles became a little different. instead of war or genocide here, it was her children, due to a combination of factors being acculturation, displacement, lack of a father figure and freedom to break tamil societal norms.

i don’t want to spill the family tea, but let’s just say there were many moments of cultural shift, heartbreak, pain and betrayal, and prolonged periods of distance and non communication. i notice that these experiences are guiltily felt now by my family, as she is in her final moments. although, by the grace of god, every one of them turned out okay and are closer to each other than ever. every ounce of pain felt and shed of tear sowed is reaped, when being surrounded by all of them as she transitions out of living. my mother, two aunts and two uncles, have not left my aachi’s side since she has been admitted to palliative care. let alone, have even eaten.

my aachi has lived with me my whole life, she basically raised me and is the reason why I can speak tamil. i love that woman with my whole heart because we are both extremely sensitive, and we are both born on the same moon (which now i doubt because we actually dont really know when her birthday is because of displacement/errors on ID cards.. if you know you know).

growing up i loved how much pride she took in her room. she is a very clean and organized person (unlike me). although like me, you can find towers of books leaning in many corners of her room, mostly of them pertaining Tamil saivam literature. she is the best cook I know, I don’t know anyone who can make nandu poriyal (fried crab dish) like her. Today in the hospital, I told her she will make nandu poriyal for me again when we meet again.

currently, she is in a deep sleep while being on hydrocodone and hydromorphine. she hasn’t ate in 75 days, or drank water in a month. her spirit is still here because it doesn’t want to leave us, but her body isn’t cooperating.

i pray my thatha, uncle and aunt, will be there to embrace her. she lost them too young, she’s spent more time here with us than them. in the hospital room, i picture them each in one corner of the room surrounding us, at guard. my aachi frequently calls out to her siblings who have passed before her (she’s the youngest in her family) and her mother.

death is only the beginning, i hope, i know i am communicating with her because I am sending her messages with my heart. non verbal communication is just as valuable and real. even though she is in a deep sleep, i feel that i almost sense what she is saying to us. we constantly talk to her, because she can hear us. it’s a miracle really, to witness. sometimes, she gestures with a shaky hand to her closed eye (for us to not cry) or to her mouth (for us to smile), or to her belly (for us to eat). those are her major ruling philosophies in life, especially the eating. my aachi has fed generations of people, despite having very little to feed herself most times. she’s fed anyone and everyone, even the dudes that work at rogers when they come over to install our wifi. she doesn’t speak a lick of english, but she knows how to gesture and knows the word “eat”. through her, i’ve learned that food is love, community, what keeps the spirit going. everybody literally eats, no matter how little there is. food is medicine. she always, always, needed to know if we ate.

aside from the nandu poriyal, I learned how to cook from my aachi. I would cut and prepare all the vegetables to ease the cooking process for her. She made the best muttai poriyal (tamil style omlette), it was always so fluffy. another fave of mine, which was more of a bonding moment than an actual meal for me, was palan sorru (old rice soaked overnight in water) with palaiya marrakari (left over vegetable curries) all mixed together by hand, commonly known as “nila sorru” (moon rice, as it is eaten under the moonlight at night time back home). the sorru urundai (rice ball) from her hand as she carefully formed it, is what defined how tasty it was.

i was always very close with my aachi until i realized i become distant with her over the years due to her dementia. this is what eats me alive and the fact that she is passing just as i finally move back home. i feel i’ve lost so much time with her. i feel an immense amount of guilt for not having more tolerance towards her behavioural challenges at times. i hated being easily overwhelmed. i wish i was more unconditional. but I’ve always loved her and would always die for her. i do sincerely wish I could give her my life force. seeing her small and withered away now, i wish my eyes just stopped working for a while, as insensitive as that sounds but i dont mean to be. i just can’t bear the weight of her image in my eyes.

i slept beside her every night until I hit puberty. she’d scratch my back until I fell asleep, whispering ghost stories, stories of her life back home, her childhood experiences, my aunts and uncle’s childhoods. i know a lot about my family, potentially more than they know me. I’m so grateful i could connect with her in Tamil so intimately, it allowed me to look into her soul.

one thing about my aachi that I will never forget, is that she never made me feel ugly or body shamed me. She never once insisted i was lesser than or needed to loose weight, unlike everyone around me when I was the fat kid/adult. She always told me i was beautiful. always. no matter what.

my aachi is the raani (queen) of our parampurai (lineage). she is the most blunt, straight forward, pure hearted, good intentioned person i know. water is wet, aachi is aachi. you take her at face value because she cares and loves.

i’m going to miss you aachi, I’ll never forget you theethu-ing (hand feeding) me on your balcony. hearing the suprabatham (sanskrit prayer) in the mornings and being so annoyed with how loud it was, smelling incense in every corner of our house, being scolded for being messy and unspiritual, our morning 7 am walks growing up, when you’d be my human shield against my amma. our house is no longer a temple because our god no longer resides here. seeing you carried out of our house by the paramedics, your body so small, barely with life, in a blue tarp, was the worst thing i’ve witnessed in my entire life.

idk how i will live without you, our mother tree. to even imagine that you will one day no longer be here physically, no body to hold you, makes me sick to my stomach.

when you fall in these woods, we’re all going to be here to hear it and burn.

i know you live within me in many ways, you have shaped and molded me into the person I am, even more than my own amma.  i’ve felt more unconditional love with you more than anyone else in this world. because of your sacrifices, you’ve enabled me to become a cycle breaker.

i still see you sitting outside our house on the front steps basking the sun, you’ll always remain there for me to visit.

please pray for my family during this difficult time. I hope to be the pillar of support for my family as we navigate the greatest loss of our lives