took me half of middle school to cry over grandma, i'd tell my friend i wanted Ba to have lived longer instead.
they all said she was so lovely, that she would welcome strangers in with homecooked meals, she would garden and decorate and no one would make fun of Dada the way she did
my brother loved her, had sweet memories from all those years i wasn't around and she could still walk
and me- well, 7 months into my life she got paralysed in one hemisphere of her brain. I can't even remember if it was the left or the right.
I feel like I remember her mostly as the chair in the corner of the hall, in her greeting us as we got back from school. her perfectly braided hair, her sweaters with the buttons along the middle, her smirk, the loose skin on her face and then, just like that, a photo frame with a brown haar around it. the photo albums, the stories.
i missed the total of a single day of 3rd grade, the night before i made myself shed tears out of respect, out of conformity, and that day in the morning we saw her body with flowers all around it and then we were sent to our aunt's where we watched Tomorrowland, played Carrom, had dhaanshaak for dinner when an insect fell into my chaash. and that was that.
later i would remember how one time Mrs.Highland from school had come over during a social function ad asked me whether i'd ask my grandmother to tell me stories, and i just said no, and thought about it for a few moments and never did anything after.
but this very memory would play on, to the bridge of marjorie by Taylor Swift, and it would make me cry and cry and cry one random day before my 3pm keyboard class. and i would have to go to the bathroom and wash my face and lay down a carpet, place my Casio keyboard and get a water bottle from downstairs for my teacher. and i would sit and wait, patient and vacant as ever, as if the whole world under me had not shaken.