A Eulogy.
It took me 9 days to write this, so here goes.
You know what to do when the Earth starts to tremble: you run for open spaces or to the nearest door frame, you hide underneath the edge of a table; then, you wait it out. You know what to do when there’s a fire; you’ve thought about the first three things you’ll save since you first learned that things can burn.
In the event of tragedies you’re meant to survive, you know what to do. We have protocols in place that we’ve been designed to deal with since we were children. We know what to do because we can get through it.
No one knows what to do after a funeral you never thought you’d be attending.
When someone too young dies before anyone thought they ever would and you see them beneath the clear glass, part of you sees them dead and knows they’re dead but your mind still thinks they’re sleeping. That’s the only version of reality that makes sense, you know?
That’s the only time that you’ve ever seen them close their eyes for any length of time.
But you know they’re not so there’s a part of you that screams, the part of you that still sounds like a child, that begs them to wake up. Joke’s over. It’s done. Stop it. Wake up.
Come back.
But then they don’t.
Then, the box closes, and you’re holding your mother back by the hand because she can’t stop crying and you’re helping your sister tie your mother’s hair back because your mom never thought she’d be burying her little sister at this age.
My aunt was only 54. Everyone called her Edjie Voi but her name was Ligaya, which is Tagalog for “joy” — which makes sense because when she left, it was like she took all the joy in the world with her. She lived in large graphic tees and had great skin all the days of her life that I’ve known her.
I’ve known my aunt my whole life and if I had to describe her in one word, it would be “steady”. Solid, even. I don’t talk to anybody much, I’m very good at keeping my business to myself, but she’d always know what was going on with me because my mom knew what was going on with me and whatever my mom knew, my aunt and my cousins tended to get the news a few hours later.
I didn’t and I don’t mind too much, not really. I’m pretty used to the dynamic.
One of my favourite stories about my aunt is the time we were in an Airbnb in London in 2018. A bit of backstory is that my aunt is the kind of person who knew everybody’s business back in the town where she lived, but not a single person knew hers. She knew everyone by name and everybody had a story to tell about her. She was the kind of person you could meet for the first time and feel like you’ve known them your whole life.
My aunt knew how to make the air around her feel like home.
I brought my friend, Livvy, over to the house my family was staying at. I don’t remember why. But my aunt was there and the thing about my aunt is that while she may be extremely personable, she doesn’t speak English too well and I would always be designated English-speaker in the family. When Livvy was over at the house, my aunt would hide in the kitchen and behind the heater because she didn’t want to “have to speak in English to an actual English person”.
My aunt refused to be dragged out. But before my friend and I left to do whatever it was that we were doing that day, my aunt handed over a large Tupperware dish filled with ulam that would have lasted Livvy and their flatmates a week, at most.
Afraid to speak in English with my friend, practically had to drag her out by the arm just to say hi, but my aunt would not let anyone leave the home she was in to leave empty-handed.
That’s how I remember her and my grandmother the most. Ever since I was a little girl, every time we would go to my grandmother’s house (which was also my aunt’s house), we would never leave without a plate to take home. Always. And we weren’t special in that regard. Strangers and family alike would always, always leave the home with at least a little something.
When I first found out that she’d passed, I stared out the car window, and in my head, I was waiting for the punchline. Because it couldn’t be real. How could someone so constant, so steady, and so solid in my life… just be gone?
She just bought a house. She was planning a housewarming party. She was planning on going back to the UK to visit my brother and sister-in-law and the children. She’d insisted on waiting for a Pfizer-brand vaccine so she wouldn’t have any problems with immigration once she could go back and visit. She had plans and problems aplenty. She was so excited for life, to live. She was supposed to grow old. I’ve only ever known her to be strong and standing and just… there. Always, always there.
How could she just be gone without a sign, without a single tremor to warn us?
I think that’s the difference when someone you love passes and they’ve been sick for a while, which is how I’ve grieved for most of my life. The family I’ve had to say goodbye to, there was time. There were goodbyes. The grief was always hard, it always hurt, but it was quiet. Part of us knows, as we tend to fear when sickness comes to call, to prepare for it at the very least. There is time to say goodbye.
There’s time.
There’s supposed to be time.
My aunt died from a sudden heart attack on the morning of the 16th of February 2022.
And immediately, the grief was different. It was violent and loud. Like the Earth beneath us didn’t so much as shake as much as it vanished entirely in an instant, and we were left floating without gravity, without air, without space.
How does anyone survive this?
I’m starting to think that the harsh truth is that you don’t. Grief, I think, is a wound that never stops bleeding. It keeps bleeding until you die. Oftentimes, it takes years for the wound to close over as wounds tend to do, the skin new and raw and fresh and tender, but then the littlest thing would nick it, and the wound would bleed anew. In time, the healed-over skin will not be as easy to break. But it will break.
And you find that the grief cuts just as deep the first time and just as sharp. And there is nothing to do but wait.
You carry grief with you until it’s you on the other side of the glass until you are the ashes to be scattered, you are the picture to be made pretty enough to remember so they never see how scared you were as you felt the pull of the other side. Until it’s you who leaves the wound behind.
It’s been 13 days, as of writing this, since my aunt passed and none of us really know what to do.
So, we just do what we’ve always done, but now we carry on with a wound that will not ever heal completely.
We can only try to remember.
We can only say goodbye to the empty air and hope the wind carries the words to wherever it is you can still hear us.
