After Everyone Leaves

Published on by Harpreet Chhachhia2 Comments

When the funeral is over, and the house finally empties of people, grief does something cruel and ordinary at the same time. Life resumes. Chores return. The day demands to be lived — and that is when the absence announces itself.

Not in grand ways. In small, brutal details.

The food bowls are the first thing I notice. I used to juggle three every day. Now I carry two, one in each hand, and my body still prepares for the weight of the third. Muscle memory has not yet learnt loss.

In the corner of the room, his mattress sits unused. The edges are stiff with dried drool — the very drool everyone used to shy away from. Zach was intensely affectionate. He loved with his whole body. And yet, visitors would dodge him, hold their clothes away, laugh nervously.

“Zach, sit down.”

“Zach, go away.”

He never understood why love had conditions.

The medicine chart still hangs on the fridge — morning, afternoon, night — followed meticulously, desperately, faithfully. A quiet record of how hard we tried. His leash hangs with the others, but his remains vacant. I notice the name tag first. Zachary. Still there. Waiting.

Then comes the first midnight walk without him.

We step out as a family, no one leaving anyone alone. The girls walk beside me, steady and present, as if they instinctively know that this is not a walk — it is an endurance test. I see the spot where Zach always stopped to pee. He took his time. He ambled. He was a big boy. He occupied space without apology.

And now that space is painfully, offensively empty.

I don’t have many grand things to say about our relationship, except this: I loved him. Fiercely. Quietly. In the way fathers often do with sons. It wasn’t demonstrative. It wasn’t dramatic. But it was solid.

Nothing like my relationship with my own father — because Zach always looked to me for help, for reassurance, for safety. And I always told him the same thing: I’ve got your back.

I used to sing to him —

You’re my honey bunch, sugar plum, pimply imply umpkin —

and he would come charging towards me, tail wagging wildly, a weapon that bruised shins and toppled objects. Love, again, without restraint.

The house feels hollow now. Zach was a large presence — lumbering, filling up rooms, claiming corners, leaning his weight into life. The gentlest boxer dog. The sweetest. And according to everyone in the family, one of the most handsome dogs they had ever seen.

He knew my aunts.

He lived through Covid with me.

He witnessed deaths.

He stood beside me through grief before becoming its centre.

He was my baby.

My baby boy.

And he has taken a piece of my heart with him.

People often talk about grief as something that arrives suddenly, but this grief has been rehearsed for months. Living with two terminally ill dogs teaches you anticipatory mourning — the long, slow exhaustion of loving while preparing to lose. And yet, when the moment finally comes, it still catches you unprepared.

Condolences arrive. Kind words follow death easily. But the real work of grief happens afterwards — when no one is watching, when the house is quiet, when memory ambushes you in ordinary moments.

These memories will keep jolting me as the days go on. I know this. I have seen enough death to know that time dulls the sharpest edges. Pain becomes a low ache. Survivable. Livable.

But not yet.

Right now, I am grief-stricken.

Right now, I am wracked with pain.

Right now, love has nowhere to go.

And so it lingers — in empty bowls, unused leashes, dried drool, midnight walks, and a father that remembers him even when the world moves on.

I Will Never Ask for Help. But I Will Remember Who Offered.

Published on by Harpreet ChhachhiaLeave a comment

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.

Zach

Published on by Harpreet ChhachhiaLeave a comment

I placed salt in the south-east corners of the house.

On the window sills.

Outside the main door.

I circled it around the bodies of those I love — seven times each — some asleep, some awake. Ancient gestures, borrowed hope. The small human instinct to bargain with forces we do not understand when life begins to slip through our fingers.

But love does not always win by force.

My baby boy continued to deteriorate. The mannitol that was meant to help only added new indignities — pressure on his bladder, blood where there should have been none. Blood in his urine. Blood in his stools. The body, brave for so long, began to quietly surrender.

The doctor told me it was time.

You can prepare for that sentence all you want. You can see it coming days, weeks, even months in advance. But when it finally arrives, it still lands like a blow to the chest. It is always difficult to hear. Always harder to witness — the slow, visible unravelling of someone you love.

I have stood at this threshold many times now. One would think death would feel familiar, even friendly. But death never comes alone. He brings grief with him — vast, consuming — and the promised relief feels like something that belongs to a future too far away to touch.

Before the end, I took Zach to Old Raj Mahal Lane — the place where he was happiest. He walked off the leash, free, unburdened, until his legs could no longer carry him. We went home after that. I fed him pizza, his favourite tuna slices from Joey’s. He ate every morsel with quiet devotion, as if marking the moment, as if saying thank you.

Now I wait.

I wait for the doctor to come home, carrying the injection of relief. Relief for him — and perhaps, someday, for me too. When my own body can no longer go on. When I am tired beyond repair. When I am surrounded by those who love me enough to let me rest.

That is what my baby boy is being given today.

And I wish — with every fibre of my being — that it did not have to be my decision. But love, when it is real, does not cling. It listens. It watches suffering honestly. And if ending pain is the last act of care left to us, then we take that burden onto ourselves so they don’t have to carry it any longer.

This is not cruelty.

This is mercy.

This is love that chooses to hurt so another does not have to.