….a mosaic of stories told in a tiny practitioner’s room….
Nadia never thought of leaving. Home was a patchwork of warm voices, her mother’s prayers whispered in the kitchen, the laughter of her friends and the rhythmic hum of the city she knew by heart. But the day came, when she was standing at the train station, filled with people, pets and suitcases. Surrounded by the noise of the helicopters and the sounds of explosions that make your blood run cold. Her life was stuffed into a backpack, her heart splintering as she hugged her grandmother goodbye. “Go,” her grandmother had said, pressing a folded prayer into Nadia’s palm. “But don’t forget where you come from.”
Years later, in a different country, in a different language, Nadia still carried that ache. Grief wasn’t just for the dead—it was for the things that lived inside you but could never be touched again. The way the air smelled after a storm back home. The laughter of a cousin who would never visit. The way her name sounded in her father’s voice. Love was supposed to be about presence, about nearness. But what happens when love must stretch across countries? What happens when grief isn’t just an ending, but an ongoing conversation with the past?
The thing about migration is, nobody warns you about the grieving. Oh, they tell you about the risks, the adventure, the struggle, the dreams waiting on the other side, the safety. But the grief? The grief sneaks up on you in the grocery aisle when you can’t find the right spices. It sucker-punches you when your tongue hesitates over your mother’s language because the new one has taken up too much space in your mouth. It sits with you at the dinner table, whispering: “Remember when this dish tasted like home?”
Nadia wasn’t the only one. She saw it in the eyes of her new friend Malik, whom she met in the integration course, who swore he was fine but who never celebrated his birthday anymore because the person who used to bake his favourite cake was half a world away. She saw it in her language class peer, Ana, who pretended she didn’t miss speaking Spanish but during breaks was putting on her Spotify list composed of Latino music when she thought no one was looking. Grief lived in all of them, tucked between the lines of their lives, as quiet as breath, as loud as a breaking heart.
In church, the pastor talked about grief as a journey. “Even Jesus wept,” he said, as if that was supposed to make it easier. But Nadia had heard and saw enough to know that grief was in every faith, in every story, in every language – and she understood them all. In Islam, grief was patience and surrender, trusting that even in loss, God had a plan. In Buddhism, it was impermanence—nothing was ever truly yours to hold forever. In her grandmother’s prayers, grief was love stretched across time, binding generations together. It wasn’t something to “get over.” It was something to carry, to embrace, like an heirloom passed down through bloodlines.
The thing about trans-generational grief? It doesn’t announce itself. It’s the way Nadia’s mother never spoke about the war her mother had fled, only that they were “lucky to leave.” It’s the way her aunt still sent money home every month, though she never spoke about what it felt like to never return. It’s the way Nadia sometimes dreamed about walking down the streets that do not exist anymore, and the memories of which were dissolving like mist when she woke up. Some griefs don’t belong to us, but we carry them anyway.
But then, there was the grief no one could prepare you for—the grief of losing someone and never getting to say goodbye. When Nadia’s brother died in the explosion in war, she had been here, thousands of miles away, staring at the phone as the news shattered her world. There was no body, no funeral, no quiet moment at the graveside to whisper her final words and to anchor her sorrow. Just a name on a list, a voice on the other end of the call confirming what she refused to believe and the unbearable weight of knowing that his absence would forever be a presence in her life. She tried to mourn, but how do you grieve without proof? How do you say goodbye when there is nothing to hold, nothing to lay to rest? Guilt clung to her like a shadow—was she selfish for leaving? Should she have stayed? Should she have fought harder to bring him with her? The questions had no answers, only echoes in the night. Grief, she realised, was not just sorrow. It was the unfinished, the unspoken, the love that had no place to go.
She wrestled with the unknown, with something that was right in her heart and yet so far away. In many religious traditions, the body serves as a sacred vessel, and proper burial rites are a final act of care—a bridge between the living and the dead. Without that, was her brother truly at peace? Did his soul linger, waiting for a farewell he would never receive? In Christianity, there was resurrection; in Islam, the promise of reunion in the afterlife; in Hinduism, rebirth. Each faith offered answers, yet none could silence the ache in her heart. Perhaps grief was its own form of faith—a belief that love, even when severed by war and distance, endures beyond what the eye can see.
One day, Nadia found herself in a tiny café, miles from where she grew up, watching an old woman press dough between her hands, shaping it the way her grandmother used to. She had never spoken to this woman before, but something in the motion, in the careful way she moulded each piece, made her throat tighten. And then, as if sensing her gaze, the woman looked up and smiled. “Do you miss home?” she asked, her accent familiar, like a song from childhood.
And just like that, Nadia felt something shift. Because grief isn’t just sadness. It’s proof that love existed, that love still exists. It’s the way we find pieces of home in strangers. It’s the way we carry our past inside us, even as we build new lives. It’s the way, no matter where we go, we never really leave the ones we love behind.
So, she sat down. And she listened. And for the first time in a long time, home didn’t feel so far away.
All names and places have been modified. Any coincidence with real persons or locations is purely incidental.