What losing my aunt to cancer taught me about grief

Grief is like the sea in autumn. When grief hits, it comes in icy waves that ebb and flow, unbothered by the dried up leaves falling, leaving the trees cold and barren. It was January last year when my aunt Badea died. I was watching Fight Club in my bedroom at 3am. When my mother opened the door, I understood. You see, my mother rarely has a look of despair that sits between her furrowed eyebrows, but as much as she tried to hide it, it was clear. Denial swarmed my stomach and climbed up my throat, and as I opened my mouth to ask her what she was doing awake at this hour, she spoke before I could get the words out. “She's dead,” she said, her voice breaking on the last consonant. As if on cue, I could hear my father shuffling around in the next room as he asked for the funeral details on the phone. I have my mother’s eyes, yet mine were dry as hers poured. I share my father’s warmth, yet all I could say was: “Would you like me to book the flight for you?” as the phone trembled in his hands. In the following days, my father left for Jordan , and I stayed back at our house in Dubai and cleaned. I folded bath towels as he watched his sister lowered six feet under. I vacuumed, dusted, and scrubbed the floors as he watched my grandmother, who I call Teta, fall apart in wails and moans, realising she had lost another daughter to breast cancer. It occurred to me then that burying your child might be the cruellest thing in the world. At first, I busied myself with things to avoid phoning Teta, but soon the feeling of guilt caught up with me and I called to offer my condolences. To nobody’s surprise, she was inconsolable. My words of comfort did nothing but fuel her pain in the moment. My other aunt, Reham, who my father tells me I look like in her younger years, had died almost a decade ago of the same disease, at the same age as Badea. So, the terrifying reality that this may be more than just a coincidence and could have been prevented did not sit well with either of us. The American Cancer Society reports that one in eight women are diagnosed with invasive breast cancer and one in 43 will die from the disease. Although the five-year relative survival rate for breast cancer is estimated to be 99 per cent, my 47-year-old aunts were part of the one per cent. The peculiar thing about grief is that your mind turns blank when you try to remember things about the deceased, until it all comes crashing down in waves. For days, all I could remember was my aunt’s bubbly laugh. But then came all the other things that made me believe people are the memories they leave behind. The chunky pearl necklace and the silver rings. The barbecue she hosted in her little garden two years ago. The ready-made pancake mix. The shoe cabinet at my grandmother’s house with her high heels from the '80s and '90s. The metallic lipstick she wore with a smile bigger than life. Some things I had never thought about previously were all I could think about now. Like how her blue eyes that resembled my father’s were always kind, or how when she was in pain, she never said a word about it, but when she was happy, she made sure everyone else was too. Grief has the ability to stealthily make its way into conversations with friends as you laugh, or into your head right before you drift off to sleep, or as you park your car, or during celebrations. We recently celebrated Easter. We feasted on meat and painted eggs to mark the resurrection of Jesus. This is one of those times when we think of the dead and hope they are still with us. On the night before Easter , I went to church for the Holy Saturday mass and as I lit candles for my aunts, a wave of grief washed over me. I dug the candles into the tray of sand alongside other lit candles, tributes to the lives of those who have left. Then, just as suddenly as the wave had hit, it passed. But I think the only truth about grief is that it never truly leaves or shrinks – instead, we grow around it by living through it. Although it often feels like pain at the beginning, grief is love that never wilts or dies. It is love that remains even after life has passed. Grief is meant to be. It would not exist if love had never been found. It is love that ebbs and flows despite the autumn leaves that shrivel and fall. For now, let it wash over, because after the hard seasons go by, the waves will still be there, but so will the sun and leaves.