Splash No. 259 - Brief Farewells
Brief Farewells
After three weeks seeing my family in Georgia, I’m heading back to San Francisco. As I said goodbye to my grandma, she talked about the difficulties of being old—how basic tasks take longer, how she forgets what she was doing. She said it was good for her to live this long, so that the younger generations could see what getting old was like. She reminisced about times when I was small, and a time when she made mango shakes for my mother’s cousin. Those were good times, she said.
She lived a tough life, living through the Partition and then busy days raising my mom and aunt—cooking and doing laundry before anyone woke up, going to work, cooking as soon as she came home. My parents lived better lives than the generation before, yet lives so much tougher than mine. There was a lot less money. They acclimated to a new country, new ways of living, uprooted from what was familiar. They live simpler lives now, spending time with family and watching British crime dramas. We look at our old vacation photos together a lot. I miss those times, we all say.
It’s as if I lived life on easy mode compared to those who came before. I always lived comfortably and felt safe. What a blessing it was. It’s only because of my parents and their parents’ struggle that I was able to go to a pretty good school and get a good job. I live a life of luxury compared to what they experienced for most of their lives, thanks to the lives they lived.
It’s a cruel fact of life that you can never repay your family for what they do for you, not really. All the money in the world wouldn’t be enough to match what has been shed for me (though it wouldn’t hurt). I try to return home often, to see my family and offer the one thing that I can give them—time together. Yet, it never seems like enough. I always wonder where the time goes and wonder if we’ll look back on the weeks here and there I spend at home throughout the year. Those were good times, I hope we’ll think.
If not, I’ll be back soon.
Drops of the Week
ALBUM - Sprained Ankle by Julien Baker - soundtrack to me writing this letter
POEM - "The Lanyard" by Billy Collins - She gave me life and milk from her breasts / and I gave her a lanyard.
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Love,
Nikhil