Writer's Block Magazine

In the most privileged way possible, the past few years I have been entangled in webs of grief and having to navigate it a few countries away. Twice I have boarded a plane knowing I was landing on a funeral. Twice, I have managed to swerve away from the questions from curious seatmates regarding my weeping. Beyond quite literal deaths and loss, I have grieved dreams that once seemed graspable, friendships that I once thought of as never-ending, versions of me that no longer served their purpose, innocence lost in the face of life. I have found my twenties (well my whole life in a non-dramatic way) to be immensely filled with grief. This sentiment that never seems to reach some resolution sits with me.

I fear I am one of those people who suffer from the off-putting “dead grandfather syndrome”, wearing it as a badge of honour. I have written ad nauseam about him, I have talked the ear off many therapists about him, I have (so far) three permanent inks on me very much related to the man, I have a necklace that has barely ever been unclasped since the day of his passing, I always put his last name wherever I sign mine. I have him in and around me at all times.

I have lived more knowing him than missing him (although the mark that changes this dynamic is looming in front of me, waiting to take over), yet missing him as always felt grander than knowing him.

While going through the stages of grief feels very protocolar and I always felt that some eerie figure of a psychiatrist was policing my not so much under stated anger telling me it was part of the process, I find concepts such as acceptance (the last of the stages they say) to creep on me. Surely, I have come to accept that my grandfather is gone, yet I think I have also come to accept that I am still deeply angry that he indeed is gone. I find myself very angry that I do not get to share with him a multitude of accomplishments that I am sure would have made him smile and puff up his chest with pride. The finality of death is so far removed from the perpetual journey of grief that it almost feels like one of those very sick jokes that life throws at you. However, setting my anger aside for a little bit, there is an immense love that lasts, and I would even argue that it grows weirdly enough. I refute the idea that this love has to always be productive and that I have to do something with it at all times. I enjoy just carrying it within me and perhaps making my grandfather live on in different ways.

As if death were not enough in the lottery of life’s misfortunes, I also witnessed my dream of being a ballerina vanish quite literally in front of me. With tales of success and promises of the bigger stages, the dream left abruptly without the grace it arrived with. Say it was a knee injury, say it was miscommunication, say it was fear of the path ahead, say it was whatever it really was, it was gone. Coming to peace with the loss of this dream is, like grief, a path I will forever be walking on, hoping that if life had been different, I would have had my pointe shoes on.

It has taken me quite some time to realise I have not parted ways with the girl on top of her toes. I, as a ballerina, live on in the smiles I find myself having when I come across a young girl, ballet bun elegantly propped at the top of her head, exuding the elegance of someone who’s heading for the barre. I, as a ballerina, live on the discipline and passion that it brewed in the studio and deploy it in other aspects of my life. I live on.

The architecture of my grief remains forever unfinished, I will not store this love elsewhere or put it away for safekeeping. I wish to be reminded of the love embedded in my losses forever, I ask for it to creep up on me and surprise me in the mundane moments of life. For if my grief is to be finished, done and dealt with, it means to lose a love that I wish haunts me forever.

Francisca Figueiras Meinedo