By Meghna
When I was five I used to have a grey t-shirt with a magical unicorn that I’d want to wear 24 hours a day. I would get anxious when it went for a wash because I wasn’t sure if the powers of the unicorn would suddenly disappear. It never did. However, as time went by a new worry formed—the worry that I would outgrow my unicorn t-shirt and not be able to wear it again.
Then a funny thing happened; I was introduced to Nintendo and I grew out of the unicorn, before growing out of the shirt, and a new obsession began. When I entered my teens I began to learn that attachments to material objects were futile and empty. That it would bring me more disappointment than joy and I would never feel satisfied. I would like to believe that I matured quite quickly and found a more simple way of life when I realized how fleeting the happiness of a Zara dress would make me.
Unknowingly another type of attachment was forming even though I so quickly patted myself on the back for mastering my ability to give up material possessions. I became attached to the country I grew up in, my house and my home. For 18 years it was my routine, my existence and my life. And in one airplane ride, when I flew off to college, it became my past, soon to be a distant memory.
As a South Asian, born in India, raised in Indonesia and now migrating to North America, the struggle for having a sense of belonging was almost worse than the fact that I didn’t feel one. I stayed up many nights with people in my dorms discussing identity and what it meant, not realizing that I could embrace the many shades of varied worlds I had encountered.
I suffered because I was attached to the idea of a home, an identity and a constant. As this idea unfolded I gradually detached myself from the bounds of a permanent identity and relished in the thought of a limitless sense of belonging. In the last eight years I have lived on three different continents as a student, as a professional and as a volunteer—and with every move I haven’t looked back; in every stay I have managed to find a home.
In the last six months, I have once again been reminded of the vice of attachments. For the first time in my life I lost someone who was a role model, a mentor, a person I considered my godfather. After 89 years of life my grandfather passed in his sleep, taking his last and final nap. It is still hard for me to accept that he has moved on to a world that I don’t belong to.
Every day I wonder where he has gone and think of all the milestones in my life that he won’t witness. Attachment to a person and their presence in your life is a universal reality, an inevitable aspect of being. Simultaneously, the absence of their physical presence is a painful, ineffable feeling that is permanent.
I miss the subtlety of my grandfather’s powerful presence and the unwavering faith he had in the human race. The kind of faith I lost when I woke up to the truth that life is not limitless and opportunities are not endless. To date, this is the greatest loss I have felt, and the strongest attachment I have had to let go of.
One of life’s hardest lessons is a move forward when all you want to do is turn back the hands of time, one last conversation with my grandfather, one last moment of hearing his laughter, one last strumming of his veena. In making peace with such a loss, if there is such a thing, I take him everywhere I go and invite him to sit in my thoughts and linger in my mind as I make daily decisions.
Keeping someone alive means involving them in the most mundane chores, recapturing their presence by keeping them present. While I yearn for his physical presence, everyday I appreciate his permanence in my thoughts and role he played in my life. Have I mastered the ability to detach myself?
