“I don’t have family anymore,” I said. Finally. “My parents and sister aren’t in my life. So, the holidays are just empty days on the calendar. That’s easier in some ways, harder in others.”
Patricia nodded.
“Grief often reshapes our relationships. Some connections deepen. Others break under the strain.”
“These ones needed to break,” I said. “They were already broken. I just finally saw it clearly.”
After the meeting, a woman named Diane approached me. She had lost her daughter to brain cancer two years earlier and we had spoken a few times before.
“I heard about your sister,” she said quietly. “The pharmaceutical fraud case. I saw your name mentioned in one of the articles.”
My stomach tightened.
“Yes.”
“I don’t judge you for it. I want you to know that. I understand the need to make people accountable, to make them see what they did.”
“Thank you.”
Diane squeezed my arm.
“But I also want you to be careful. Revenge can become addictive. It can consume you the way grief does. Don’t let it be the only thing that keeps you moving forward.”
I thought about her words on the drive home. Was revenge consuming me or had it simply filled a void that nothing else could touch? I did not have an answer.
Work became my refuge. I threw myself into nursing with an intensity that worried Julia. I took extra shifts. I volunteered for the most difficult cases. I stayed late, came in early, worked through lunch breaks.
The clinic director, a physician named Dr. Harrison, called me into his office one afternoon.
“Meera, you’re one of our best nurses. You know that your patient care is exemplary. But you’re burning out. I can see it. Everyone can see it.”
“I’m fine.”
“You’re not fine. You’ve worked 50our weeks for 3 months straight. You haven’t taken a vacation day since your daughter passed. You need rest.”
“Work helps. It keeps me focused.”
Dr. Harrison leaned back in his chair, studying me.
“I lost my brother when I was in medical school. Motorcycle accident. I did exactly what you’re doing. Worked myself to exhaustion trying to outrun the grief. It doesn’t work. The grief is always waiting when you stop.”
“So, what’s the alternative? Sit at home and fall apart?”
“The alternative is finding a way to live with the grief instead of running from it. Therapy, support groups, time to process, not just work, work, work until you collapse.”
“I’m already in a support group.”
“That’s good. But you also need to give yourself permission to heal, to have a life beyond your daughter’s death. That doesn’t mean forgetting her. It means learning to carry her memory without letting it destroy you.”
I left his office feeling agitated. Everyone had advice about grief. Everyone thought they knew the right way to mourn, the proper timeline for healing, the appropriate methods of coping.
But none of them had buried a three-year-old. None of them had been abandoned by their family in their darkest hour. None of them understood the particular combination of rage and anguish that lived in my chest, inseparable and constant.
2 months before the second anniversary of Grace’s death, I received an unexpected phone call. The area code was from Oklahoma where my parents had moved.
It was not my parents calling. It was my aunt Lydia, my father’s sister. I had not spoken to her since before Grace died.
“Meera, I know you probably don’t want to hear from family right now. But I need to tell you something. Your father had another heart attack. A serious one this time. He’s in intensive care.”
I felt nothing. No panic, no concern, no sadness.
“Okay.”
“Your mother asked me to call. She’s afraid to contact you directly. She wanted you to know in case you wanted to visit.”
“I don’t.”
Lydia sighed.
“I know what happened. Your mother told me everything about the funeral, about Vanessa, about all of it. What they did was wrong. Meera. Unforgivably wrong. But your father might die. Don’t you want to say goodbye?”
“He said goodbye to me when he chose a party over his granddaughter’s funeral. There’s nothing left to say.”
“He’s eaten up with guilt. Both of them are. They know they failed you. They just don’t know how to fix it.”
“They can’t fix it. It’s broken permanently.”
“So, you’re just going to let him die without any reconciliation? You’re going to carry that forever?”
“I’m already carrying forever. Aunt Lydia, my daughter is dead. She died scared and in pain. And the people who should have supported me abandoned me. If my father dies, that’s not my burden. That’s his consequence.”
“You’ve become so hard.”
“I’ve become realistic. I spent my whole life believing family meant something. That blood created obligation. I was wrong. Family is just people who happen to share DNA. If they don’t act like family, they don’t deserve to be treated like family.”
“Grace wouldn’t want this.”
Everyone kept invoking Grace as if her memory gave them authority to judge my choices.
“Grace is dead. She doesn’t want anything. And she died knowing her grandparents cared more about a party than about her. So don’t tell me what she would want.”
I hung up.
My father did not die. He recovered enough to leave the hospital, though he was permanently weakened. I heard this through mutual acquaintances, not through family contact. I felt no relief at his survival. I felt nothing at all.
