15 September 2015. A Tuesday.
It has been 11 years, but I still remember everything.
Not just the day he died. I remember the days before it, the little things I didn’t understand then, the things nobody told me, and the things I understood only after it was too late.
After July, my Appu was in and out of the hospital. My tuition was on the same road as our house. I remember walking past our house sometimes and looking towards it with fear. Whenever I saw a crowd, I would get scared for a moment.
But I was never expecting him to die.
In my mind, he was going to come back home.
He always came back.
On 12 September, I saw him in the hospital.
He was in the ICU, with the breathing support and everything around him. I knew he was very sick. I knew he couldn’t eat properly. I knew things weren’t normal.
But when he looked at me, it still felt normal.
He asked me, “Muttai kondu vanille?”
Didn’t I bring something for him?
That was so Appu.
Whenever I went anywhere, I would bring him something. Chocolates, snacks, whatever I could get. Even after school. Even when he was sick.
That day, I had bought him clothes. I gave them to him.
I knew he couldn’t eat anything. I knew he was lying there connected to all those machines.
But I still wanted to give him something.
I didn’t know that would be one of the last normal moments I would have with him.
There is another strange thing I remember about 12 September.
That day was also my internal exam. I was studying the Solid State chapter, and it was Chapter 12.
Somehow, that number has stayed in my head ever since.
Then came 14 September.
It was my grandparents’ wedding anniversary.
I called Ammamma that day.
Nobody told me how serious Appu was.
Nobody told me that he was dying.
Nobody told me that I should come to the hospital.
And maybe that is the part I have struggled with the most.
Because by the time I was sitting in school the next day, waiting for Amma to come for my PTA meeting, he was already gone.
On 15 September, around 2:30, Amma called my school.
She said she couldn’t come for the PTA meeting at 4.
Amma never missed my PTA meetings.
So I was curious.
I called her three times.
She picked up.
I asked what happened.
She told me everything was fine.
I had heard something about someone being taken in an ambulance, so I asked her who it was.
Again, she said everything was fine.
I remember hearing Amma say something about calling an ambulance. I asked her what happened. She told me it was only a cut and that everything was fine.
So I believed her
At school, someone came and told me that my mother couldn’t make it to the PTA meeting.
I remember thinking maybe she would still come.
Maybe she would call.
Maybe everything was okay.
I had no idea that the reason she couldn’t come was because my grandfather had already died.
At around 5:30, my Kunjammumma came to pick me up.
She asked me whether I had eaten.
I said no.
“I’ll eat at home.”
I was so confident.
I had no idea what was waiting for me at home.
They got a call on the way and decided to drop me there.
When I reached home, I saw a crowd.
I remember walking towards the corridor, looking for my Appu.
And then Amma held me by my waist.
She turned me towards her and said,
“Appu poi.”
He was gone.
I went completely blank.
I didn’t know how I was supposed to react.
I remember trying to scream.
I remember wanting to tell everyone,
“I don’t have anyone anymore.”
But nobody understood what I was trying to say.
And underneath the shock, there was anger.
Why didn’t anyone tell me?
Why didn’t anyone call me on the 14th?
Why didn’t anyone tell me that he was this serious?
Why was I the last person to know?
I was his granddaughter.
I was the person he remembered.
I should have known.
The next morning was Wednesday.
White and white.
I had lab.
I remember taking my white clothes and my lab coat and forcing myself to go to Kunjammuma’s house. I tried to study.
But by then, everyone knew.
Everyone in my class knew.
I remember on Wednesday - seeing the girls coming towards me, hugging me, asking if I was okay.
My best friend Jainel came and hugged me.
And that was when it hit me again.
Everyone knew.
I was the last person to know.
Then, during the morning Chemistry class, around 10 or 10:15, I saw my Chemistry teacher.
There was something about his face.
His long nose.
He looked so much like my grandfather.
My eyes immediately filled with tears.
I just wiped them away and sat there.
I couldn’t even eat my lunch that day.
In the afternoon, my youngest Kunj-ammuma came to pick me up.
I went home.
And that’s when everything I had been holding inside finally came out. There my kunja (Amma's sister) was standing
I cried.
Not because I knew how to grieve.
I didn’t.
I was just a child who had suddenly lost the person who had been such a huge part of her life.
Then came Friday.
The day his body was brought home.
I stood there completely broken and numb.
His body was cold.
And my mind started creating things I couldn’t control.
I kept thinking,
What if he didn’t die?
What if he was alive in the mortuary?
I imagined him banging on the door.
“Open the door. I’m alive.”
I know it sounds strange now.
But that was what my mind was doing then.
Nobody knew.
Nobody understood.
I remember putting a small chandanam on his forehead and a little kunkumam in the middle.
He looked so beautiful.
All I wanted was to kiss his forehead.
They told me not to because of the chemicals used on the body.
There were also rituals where they said boys should do certain things.
I was stubborn.
I wanted to be there.
I wanted to do it.
Because I couldn’t accept that he was gone.
I remember seeing my grandmother sitting there, looking at his body from the kitchen.
She looked like a part of her had already died with him.
I remember his friends.
His relatives.
People who had known him long before I did.
Some of my family members didn’t recognize everyone because they had spent years living outside Kerala.
But I recognized them.
I knew his people.
I knew his friends.
I had grown up seeing them.
And when his body was taken for cremation, I stayed.
I waited.
I couldn’t leave.
I remember waiting until even his backbone broke and fell into the ashes.
I came back around six.
And without telling anyone, I took some of his ashes.
I kept them with me.
I don’t even know why I did it.
Maybe some part of me still couldn’t let him go.
Then, in 2016, we went to Sikkim.
And that became one of the strangest and most beautiful memories connected to him.
When Appu was very sick with Parkinson’s, he used to ask me for five rupees because he wanted to go to Sikkim.
He wanted to see Sikkim so badly.
And somehow, in 2016, we went there.
I carried some of his ashes with me.
And I let them go into the waters of Sikkim.
The place he had always wanted to see.
He couldn’t go there himself.
So I took a little part of him there.
Maybe that was my way of finally letting him go.
But the truth is, I don’t think I ever really did.
Even now, the room where Amma and I sleep is beside the place where he rests.
Sometimes I look towards it and cry.
I still cry.
I just don’t tell anyone.
Sometimes a movie, a scene, a smell, a random memory anything can bring everything back.
And I can still break down like that little girl.
Nobody really knows how attached I was to him.
From eighth standard until twelfth, I watched Parkinson’s slowly change him.
I came home from school to give him his medicines.
I fed him.
I took care of him.
There were times when he didn’t remember people.
There were things about his own life that he forgot.
But somehow, he remembered me.
He trusted me.
Even when his memory was disappearing, he remembered me.
And maybe that’s why 12 September stays with me so much.
Because he looked at me and asked me the same little question he always asked.
“Muttai kondu vanille?”
Didn’t I bring something for him?
I did.
I always did.
And I wish I had known that would be one of the last times.
Eleven years later, I still don’t know exactly how to explain what he was to me.
He wasn’t just my grandfather.
He was the person who made me feel safe.
He was the person who knew me when so many other things around me were changing.
He was my Appu.
And maybe that is why, even after eleven years, a part of me is still walking down that tuition road, looking towards our house, hoping I won’t see a crowd.
Still expecting him to come home.
Still remembering him asking me for something small.
Still wishing someone had called me.
Still wishing I had known.
Still missing him.
My Appu.
My everything.
11 years later, I still haven’t learned how to say goodbye. 🤍
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