On Grieving Away From Home

On the 2nd of January of 2021, 301 people died due to Covid-19 complications in Brazil. A person I loved was one of them. Since the pandemic started, I’ve been experiencing grief for my old life and for the person I used to be. As our world got restricted to our rooms, and awkward exchanges with housemates in the kitchen, I was grieving my freedom and the endless possibilities a life in London could bring you when things used to be normal. Like all of us, I learned to live with loss, with loneliness and with the complete absence of a future, and even a present you could rely on to feel safe. 

Once, I read that loneliness behaves like mould; it slowly spreads onto every aspect of you, until you don’t feel you have the capacity to form connections anymore and the isolation starts. Feeling lonely in a big city is not a new experience but feeling lonely in a place that is not even your home invites a whole new level of isolation as you don’t have any familiar smells, sights or connections to make you feel you belong. When the second lockdown started, most of my friends decided to go back home temporarily and I saw London becoming more and more like a strange city to me. Then, on the 2nd of January, after a month fighting against COVID, my aunt No passed away. It was around 5AM in the UK when I got the news through a Whatsapp message in my family group.

It’s hard to describe what grief feels like when your family is on the other side of the world. You can’t really grasp that what happened is true because you haven’t seen them in so long. You can’t participate in any sort of rituals either; rituals that in a normal situation may offer closure and the realisation that they’re gone, and that your life from now on will be different.

This was my first time experiencing grief and also the first time I truly realised how far away from my family I am and mostly, how far away from my roots I have become after living abroad for nearly six years. For most of this time, I was unable to feel at home. When you make the decision to say goodbye to everything that is familiar to you –to enter a foreign world that expects you to fully adapt to them–, home will always be a temporary feeling. Sometimes I would find myself feeling just like I would in my mom’s kitchen: waiting for the cake to be ready and for her to pick up some fruits in our garden. But, for most of the time, home would be waiting for the next opportunity to go to Brazil. 

After moving to the UK, being Brazilian became a big part of my identity. Having to adapt to a much colder society, I found comfort in understanding what was lacking in my daily life by identifying exactly what made me feel at home in Brazil. It was the colours, the smiles, the openness and how easy it was to enter in a deep conversation with a person you’ve never seen before in your life. Over the years, despite feeling more connected with my Brazilian identity, I felt more and more disconnected from my family roots. Maybe it was because, by living abroad, I was missing out on all the family gatherings; those events where I would hear stories about people who I’d never met –aunts, uncles and parents– but who were still a part of my history. 

After my aunt passed away, my family organised a few online meetings where the younger generations would hear stories about her childhood and early adulthood, a life we were totally unfamiliar with and that patched together the beautiful person she was. I was surprised by how much I didn’t know about her and started thinking about how much I didn’t know about my mom and all the important people she had in her life before I was born. 

As I was starting to find a tiny bit of joy in my life again, I got the terrifying news of another aunt who was diagnosed with COVID-19. I told myself that it was impossible that the same would happen to her, and the family tried to remain hopeful. Despite this, at 5PM UK time I got another message on Whatsapp. On the 2nd of March, 1,726 people died of COVID-19 in Brazil. My aunt So, the youngest of  seven siblings, was one of them.

If it was hard to understand what grief felt like the first time, now it felt like the world had stopped. From all the complex emotions that come with grief, fear was always there. Fearing that it would happen again; fearing the distance, not knowing when I would be able to go back;  and fearing that I would be unable to hear my family’s stories in time. 

Maybe as a way to cope with the uncertainty of the future, I’m holding on to the past. I am now getting to know more about how my family were as children and teenagers, and also about the people who were important to them, like their grandmother Olinda. When something like this happens, you need to find a way of honouring their lives and keeping their memories alive as a way of making them live on. 

From the years we spent together, I got to know that No was kind and would love people without asking anything in return. She was often insecure about many things, but she would have the most beautiful smile when I reassured her about how great she was. I now also know that, before I was born, she would not let her siblings eat their popcorn until they told her what animal each popcorn piece looked like, and that she would also keep a little box of love notes from her secret admirers. 

From the years we spent together, I got to know that So was full of life; loved travelling, dancing and taking care of her plants. You never know when it’s going to be the last time you speak with someone, but I’m glad I remember everything, even what her eyes were saying to me. From the years before my time, I know now she was adventurous and would take her young nephews and nieces to concerts and to meet her new boyfriend –who had a convertible car. 

I got to know what the best thing about my great-grandmother Olinda was –how she would make my mom feel so safe and happy, and how she would shamelessly cheat on card games because she couldn’t stand to lose. She would go on her horse to town to sell wine, bread, jam and everything else to make some money from it. She would also bake twenty loaves of bread and let her seven grandchildren choose their baking forms, which would come out unrecognisable from the oven. After seeing my great-grandmother through the eyes of my mother as a child, I realised what a wonderful person Olinda was. 

Four months later, I’m still in the process of grieving and getting to know the people who came before me. Although Olinda will probably remain my favourite person I’ll never meet, getting closer to these stories and recognising a part of myself in all these people is an important part of this process. I’m still not home but it seems like I’m opening some space to feel less isolated by bringing home with me.