Review Of ‘Goodbye, Amma: Grief With Grace’

The meaning of life is that it stops, said Franz Kafka. Goodbye, Amma: Grief with Grace (Hawakal Publishers), Chitra Gopalakrishnan’s raw and disarming memoir, is about what it means to square up to the finality of death; its absolute, unshakeable finality. It is also about living life on a split base, between life and death, in an existential state of being fully aware of one’s mortality while facing life's daily demands.

So, if this memoir is about death, it is as much about life happening even as it’s falling apart. And after.

As Gopalakrishnan navigates her mother's declining health and the approaching reality of her impending death, which feels “both near and distant” amidst the “vast, disembodied, smoky-grey billows”, her narrative unfolds in a layered style. Her memoir uniquely combines diary entries, fictional reconstructions and philosophical reflections. This genre-bending approach lets her delve into the minutiae of their experiences while expanding her ideas.

While its structured format lets her confront her fears and daily grief, its unconventional deviations help her seek a way out of the seemingly bottomless void through introspection and the insights of philosophers, writers and thinkers. It allows her the freedom to explore her belief that while death may extinguish life, it also opens the door to infinity—a way to perceive the “continuities beyond this life”. And through such an uncommon narration, she invites readers to realise that “if grief hums, grace sings”.

As the narrative moves through her ninety-four-year-old mother’s illness and state of bedridden-ness, Gopalakrishnan simultaneously moves through the emotions that assail her as a caretaker. They are a shifting mosaic that changes with frightening speed and intensity. Sometimes, these emotions pool; other times, they burst. After all, nothing prepares you to see your mother suffering in this manner. Yet, both the narrator and the narrative are willing to sit with the discomfort, and the writing is deliberately variable, marked by floundering and sudden, adrenalised bursts. If the writer’s anxiety is contagious and catches readers in its swell of uncertainty, it also teaches us to nurture parts of ourselves.

For me, personally, the idea of her mother's legacy prevails. Of carrying on what she has believed in: to be gentle and deeply forgiving. And persist with how she lived: “with steady restraint and patience, learning to find strength in pain, hurt and disappointment” and especially continuing her reinforced belief that “addressing life’s crisis with compassion is essential for renewing faith". More so, the idea of feminine legacy predominates, as her daughter, daughter-in-law, granddaughters and great-granddaughter hope to carry her baton.

And the lines in the introduction linger: “The space between the care we give and the care we accept is the true measure of life and afterlife, especially when self-sufficiency is not possible. And that independence is not the true privilege of life, but being loved and cared for is.” It reminds me of Margaret Mead’s observation that the first sign of civilisation is a healed femur, the sign of compassion.

(Mayuri Chawla Saini is a journalist, writer, former organiser of the Hong Kong Literary Festival, and director of the art organisation, Delhi Street Art.)