Object Impermanence
Sometimes, it feels like the most important people in my life are gone. Like my grandfather. That giant of a man, who brought our family together every Friday, and gave us a sense of history and permanence. Or Katarina, who left me one day over the phone, and eventually blocked me on whatsapp. These people tethered me to this world, each in their own way. What they also share is how they left me. One day, I could reach them by calling them on the phone, and even though it only gave me a fraction of their presence, it was a promise that I could one day touch their skin, hug and hold them, if I worked towards it hard enough. And then, all of a sudden, that channel was broken, and gone was the promise of ever holding someone I loved with the softest parts of me. No longer was I tethered to this world, and no longer could I get in touch with the soft parts of me. That divorce from my own vulnerability, from my own deepest pains and joys, was the very divide in my soul, and the reason why my heart could not find happiness, no matter where I searched, inside or out. Within me was always a sense of brokenness, a wound that nothing and no one could heal. Or so I thought.
But immigration does that to you. You give up a base, a home, a reality, in the hope of discovering something better in the great and vast unknown of another land, another life, another culture and new, strange people. What I had known so dearly in all of my tender childhood disappeared behind a screen, and becomes a dream that I have to walk away from in order to build a life in my new, waking world. It’s almost cruel to build a life with the goal of outshining a previous one. It’s unfair to both lives. One can never recreate what you have lost, and you cheat the other out of a grieving. No matter how I weighed my days after immigration, they were never going to be more than what I had lost. The whole thing is about change, and change demands grief.
How do you teach a child to grieve? I taught my inner child to grieve when I accepted that I could no longer count on Katarina to be my partner, and possibly never my friend either. Grueling, thankless work, the first grief. It came as a shock to me how much pain there was. The catharsis I sought never came, and I only got better in lengthy, measured increments. I’m not well, I’m healing. I will never be well by the standards I had when I still had my grandfather in my life, or when I still called Katy my partner. My standards have had to change as well, and this is neither good nor bad. Simply necessary, under the circumstances.
So, the experience of immigration, and that of a breakup over long distance both taught me object impermanence. Things that lie in promise can disappear. It doesn’t mean that everything must be discarded as soon as distance separates you and what you long for. Sometimes, that is the right answer. But in any case, grief is a possibility. Nothing is granted, and everything must be cherished. Even the pain. Because even the grief is impermanent. It changes, and feelings you hoped to feel through and through eventually fade. Such is life. New feelings arise in their place, and hopefully, you learn to cope, because there is no other way. Even by holding the ones we love close, we run the risk of losing them. And one way or another, we will. There is no silver lining that can make up for that loss, and grief is, truly, its own reward. It will not lead to better days, because better days come of their own accord, and often as a result of cherishing whatever comes your way. There is a whole segue towards how lucky one must be to have the capacity to be grateful. Circumstance dictates a lot of it. But that is a large conversation that deserves its own time. For now, there is grief and what a beautiful, monstrous process it can be. Rather than a linear progression towards a healthier outlook on life, it has often felt like a lateral shift of perspective, but always a necessary one. And it has always left me feeling more grateful for the life that I have, but only because I am intentional about feeling joyful in life, and I am embarrassingly lucky in my life circumstances. That’s a fact that is often eclipsed from my attention as I go through the process of grieving some major loss, but it reliably comes back because I look for it, and because I am objectively more fortunate than most people on earth in terms of opportunities and resources.
As it often does when I think things through long enough, what started as a feeling in my chest that I should write about the people I lost behind the screen of distance and time slowly became a treatise on life and how grateful I am for mine. It’s not to say that the people I lost, for now or forever, are any less important for it. Part of me says that it is precisely because of their tender love for me that I have an obligation to squeeze every drop of joy there is in life, and sit with every wave of pain that threatens to engulf me. Whatever the case, it’s often been my experience that by committing to a certain standard for myself and my loved ones — for me, kindness, love and joy are vague but useful measuring sticks — I am able to navigate grief, and accept that it shifts everything in its path, including my own sense of direction. And that’s the unexpected gift of loss. Things and people that we once thought indispensable become cherished memories, and we are once again grounded in the now. Especially if we are lucky enough to have or find the right people to travel that path with.
And money. Money helps as well. Money pays for therapy, and for takeout when cooking feels like a chore, and for groceries when it doesn’t, and for a million other things that people with money can take for granted. One day, maybe, if mutual care becomes the norm, money won’t speak as loudly, but for now, it’s important to me to keep in mind that people who don’t have the resources that I do have challenges that I’ve rarely had to face, and it is not only ignorant, but also oppressive to ignore that fact. So I’ll close with this: distance, like everything else, is impermanent, and if we have the luxury of choosing how we deal with loss, let’s choose to embrace it, and move through it with grace. There is truly no telling what will be on the other side.
