Of love and loss: Living with the death of loved ones and survivor guilt

The death of a loved one is not something anyone heals from ever. There is guilt, there is grief, there is faith and a set of comforting rituals. But perhaps, time can help us become more graceful sufferers, writes Arundhati Ghosh

They lie when they tell you that time heals all wounds. The death of someone you love dearly isn’t something you can completely heal from ever. From the finality of their absence emerges a sense of loss that does not arrive like a season with a plan for exit. Once it comes, it mostly stays. Clinging to the fragments left unfinished by the departed, it seeps into the bones of objects that belonged to them and experiences they have claims over. Most unsettling is their lingering presence in all the spaces they once occupied, and yet not physically existing anywhere at all. A colleague once told me that she was torn between scrubbing her recently departed mother’s pillowcase to rid it of the smell of her hair oil, and keeping it preserved for as long as she could. She said the smell entered her sleep and unhinged the carefully arranged sanity she wrapped herself in, post her mother’s passing.  

Our relationship with the death of a loved one is complicated. Some make shrines. Lament is ritualised, practiced into habit. A friend’s sister would not allow anyone to enter her deceased father’s room insisting that it would sully his sacred memory. Some clear the shelf. They give away not just belongings of those gone but also habits of being together. “I can’t go running anymore, so I am listening to podcasts instead,” a friend shared, filling the empty shelf with new routines. Some are lost indefinitely attempting to make sense of their new reality, while still others throw themselves headlong into work. While these are ways to deal with the emptiness, sometimes ‘dealing’ can be a way of dodging the inevitable. Have we accepted the loss? Have we allowed grief to find a room in us? Grief is a stubborn guest. It does not turn away even if the door is shut. And without settling in, it does not ease its relentless grip.  

Survivor guilt

The death of a loved one sometimes brings a feeling of guilt — that of surviving them. I listen to older women, including my mother, who have lost their husbands talk about counting days, and waiting to meet their spouses in the afterlife. As if they are on borrowed time. Their guilt is made darker with patriarchy calling them shameless and unlucky for lingering long after their husbands have passed. Parents who bear the inconsolable burden of the passing of their children perish quietly under the weight of guilt. It can feel like a crime to be happy after such a death, to take pleasure in a world which was meant to be theirs. But the denial of happiness to self can become a brittle illness over time — harder to heal from than even the deepest of sorrow. There is also the constant responsibility of remembering the departed, and the anxiety around forgetting them. Baba was cremated and I miss going to a specific site with his remains. I once told my friend that she was lucky; she can visit her father’s grave anytime. “But do you realise how terrible I feel if I somehow forget to do so on occasions I am meant to?” she replied.

A question of faith

I have often wondered how much of our relationship with death is shaped by religion and faith. Ma and I had gone home for just half an hour in which Baba passed away in the hospital. I of little faith tortured myself for years wondering if he was scared in his last minutes and needed us there. Ma’s faith told her that Baba could only leave when we were not by his side and let him go. She accepted this wholeheartedly, while I suffered regret. While funerals in themselves are steeped in methods of severing attachments, the post funeral mourning practices of various religions attempt to build acceptance of death through deliberate processes of letting go, distancing, and closure. Rituals ensure that the bereaved are not left alone, food is shared, and community holds space. A friend whose father had donated his body for medical sciences shared how difficult it was for the family to come to closure with specific rituals.

For some faiths, death is only a moment in a string of occurrences that exemplify the impermanence of life. For some others, it is not a full stop but a semicolon, a crossover from this world to various afterlives that include heavens, judgment days and rebirths. Ma believes her God will hold a lantern to help her get to the other side of Vaitarani — the river between this life and after — where Baba will be waiting for her. When it is difficult to accept an end to existence as we know it, it is easier perhaps to seek refuge in an imagined continuity. For most believers, the possibility of meeting the loved ones again in some form of afterlife eases the weight of the loss. However, atheists and other non-believers have to cope with ideas of non-being and nothingness after death which seems way more challenging. 

Amidst our complex relationships with death, perhaps it is a blessing that we continue to mourn forever the death of someone we love. In the ache of that wound, life remains fragile as an evidence of love. The sense of loss is both a witness and a legacy. And while time can never completely heal these wounds, it does make us endure better, become more graceful sufferers. 

FEEDBACK

Have something to say? Send your feedback and suggestions to
[e-mail]

(This column navigates the various worlds of entangled relationships attempting to celebrate, cope with, and reimagine the meanings of our connections. Arundhati Ghosh is a writer, cultural practitioner, social activist, and traveller. All Our Loves: Journeys with Polyamory in India is her first book in English published by Aleph Book Company in 2025.)