Category: I Am

I have learnt something about grief that no book, no well-meaning quote, and no condolence message ever teaches you.

When death finally arrives, people show up. Messages pour in. Words of sympathy arrive from corners you didn’t even expect to remember you. “So sorry for your loss.” “Heartbreaking.” “Sending love.” And I am grateful for every single one of them. Truly.

But grief does not begin at death.

Grief begins long before — in the months when you are carrying the unbearable quietly.

For months, I have been living with two terminally ill dogs. Not metaphorically. Not dramatically. Literally. With medication schedules that rule the clock. With hospital visits that fracture sleep. With anxiety that sits in the body like a permanent ache. With fear that never quite leaves the room, even on good days.

I spoke about it. I posted about it. I did not cloak it in poetry or optimism. I said plainly: this is hard. This is exhausting. This is breaking me in ways I didn’t anticipate.

And that is where the silence lived.

Very few texted to ask, “Are you managing today?”

Very few dropped by unannounced, just to sit on the floor and see the reality.

Very few said, “Can I take one thing off your plate?”

Very few said, “You don’t have to talk — I just want to be there.”

Just a handful. A precious, unforgettable handful. Thanks, Christina, Anil, Madhvi, Jatin, Husain, Priti.

They didn’t ask for permission to care. They didn’t wait for tragedy to be official. They came when things were messy, unresolved, ongoing. When there was nothing to mourn publicly yet, and no neat ending to respond to.

That is what I will remember.

Because help that arrives after loss is kind — but help that arrives during suffering is love.

We live in a world that is comfortable with outcomes, not processes. Death makes sense to people. It has language. It has rituals. It has scripts. Long-term caregiving, anticipatory grief, emotional depletion — these things make people uncomfortable. They don’t know what to say, so they say nothing. They don’t know what to do, so they disappear.

And I understand that too. I really do.

But understanding doesn’t erase the knowledge that settles in your bones when you realise how alone endurance can be.

I have learnt that asking for help is not natural to everyone. For some of us, it feels like exposure. Like burdening. Like weakness. So we don’t ask. We speak honestly and hope that someone listening will hear the invitation between the lines.

Sometimes they do.

Most times, they don’t.

And that is life.

Zach is gone now. And yes — the messages have come. The kindness has come. The sympathy has come. I receive it with grace.

But what stays with me are the names of the people who showed up when there was nothing to say sorry for yet. When there was only tiredness. Only fear. Only a house holding too much.

Those are the people grief reveals.

I will never ask for help.

But I will always remember who offered.

And I will carry that knowledge forward — quietly, without bitterness — knowing exactly how I want to be when someone else is surviving something long, invisible, and unbearably human.

I don’t know when exactly the anxiety turned into something heavier, but I know it has been building for weeks. Maybe months. With Xena, nothing happens suddenly — it gathers, quietly, until one day it asks to be acknowledged.

Xena has mast cell tumours. Not one or two, but many — scattered across her body like reminders that her system has been fighting a long, unseen war. Most of them have been manageable. They rise, they settle, they dry out when left alone. I learnt early that touching, creams, and over-intervention only make things worse. When I stopped fussing, some of them calmed. One on her ear even healed completely, turning skin-coloured, no longer bleeding, no longer angry. That gave me hope — perhaps this was how we would manage things. Carefully. Gently. Day by day.

But the one in her eye was different.

It sat on the third eyelid, fragile and vascular, in a place that cannot truly rest. When it bled the first time, it terrified me — not just the blood, but the panic in her body, the confusion, the sudden loss of calm. We learnt how to stop it. Cold compresses. Pressure. Emergency visits. Antihistamines. Steroids. Each time, the bleeding stopped. Each time, I hoped it might behave if left alone.

We put the cone on her. She hated it. I hated it more. Watching her try to sleep, try to exist, with that plastic barrier around her head felt cruel, even though I knew it was protecting her. She struggled at first, then slowly began to make peace with it. Or maybe she was just too tired to fight.

Medication complicated everything. Morphine made her dazed and unsteady, her hind legs unreliable. It wasn’t a bad reaction — she ate, she drank — but she wasn’t herself. Gabapentin added to the fog. I kept watching her, trying to tell the difference between pain, sedation, fear, and surrender. I kept questioning myself: am I helping her, or just managing my own fear?

All the while, I was holding another truth — that Xena is not my only sick child. Zach’s body is failing him too, in quieter but relentless ways. Cancer, steroids, muscle loss. Watching both of them struggle at the same time has been more than I know how to process. I wanted to lift them both onto the sofa, gather them into the safety of my arms, but even that felt impossible. Xena wanted down. The cone went back on. Another small grief.

I told myself we would wait. Observe. Give it a few days. Let the morphine wear off. See how the eye behaves if she doesn’t scratch it. Try to maintain the status quo. Surgery terrified me — general anaesthesia, her age, her cancer, the risks, the fear of harming the eye, the fear of losing her on a table instead of in my arms.

Then today, at the vet, the eye bled again.

Not dramatically. Not uncontrollably. Just enough to tell us what we already knew but didn’t want to accept: this was no longer stable. This was no longer something we could manage indefinitely at home, no matter how careful we were.

Dipti called and said we should come at one. They would do quick blood work. An ECG. Check her heart. And then — an emergency surgery in the afternoon. The eye tumour would be removed. And if she did well under general anaesthesia, they would remove the problematic mast cell tumours on her chest too. If not, they would stop.

That conditional sentence mattered to me. If she does well. Not force. Not ego. Not ambition. Just care.

I realised then that this wasn’t panic. This was listening. Listening to her body, which had finally said, I can’t keep doing this.

I am terrified. I am sad. I am exhausted from loving so fiercely. But I also know this: I have not ignored her. I have not rushed her. I have not abandoned her to suffering. Every step has been watched, weighed, questioned, and chosen with love.

I don’t need miracles anymore. I don’t need cures. What I want — what I am choosing — is peace. Fewer emergencies. Less fear in her body. Fewer moments of blood and panic and confusion.

Xena has been brave since the day she travelled alone in a crate from Bangalore to find me. She is still brave now. And I will be brave for her, even when my hands shake.

Whatever happens next, I want to remember this:

I did not look away.

I stayed.

I listened.

And every decision I made was rooted in love.