Deferring grief

I attended my second funeral when I was seventeen.

He is — was — my friend. 

I try not to think about it too much. To push past the “what ifs” and the guilt that haunts the major milestones in my life. He’ll never get to move into his freshman dorm, the way I did last year. He’ll never get to understand the nostalgia I feel driving around our hometown after being away for months at a time.

It’s taken a lot of time and therapy to feel okay about that. Maybe not ok, maybe never at peace, but still able to exist with that reality.

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My grandfather dies on the Monday of finals week. 

Technically speaking, with the 16-hour time difference between California and Singapore, he actually dies in the late afternoon of the Sunday before finals week. I’m sitting knee deep in a practice exam in the ChEM-H building when I get the news. I pack up my things and begin the freezing cold bike ride to my chemistry review session. It’s easy — too easy — to get lost in Clasien condensations and reactions with chromic acid.

I call my sister after, as I bike down Jane Stanford Way towards the dining hall.

“How are you?” she asks.

“Good,” I reply.

“Did you hear the news?” she pushes.

Oh. Yes. I’m not supposed to be good. This is real, this is happening and I shouldn’t feel so neutral about it all. So unbothered by all of it.

I try to remember how I felt at seventeen losing my friend. The guilt, the grief, the hurt so deep that it felt physical. The pure shock and despair that clouded the rest of my year.

Yet today, when my biological grandfather dies, the man who gave me my last name, I feel nothing. 

I take my first final on Monday morning, less than 24 hours later. It goes well, and as I bike from the med school towards Lakeside, my sister dutifully informs me that she will be going back to Singapore.

Munching on a sickly sweet piece of cantaloupe, I begin browsing flights that would get me there in time for the Friday funeral. If I take an incomplete in biology, if I fly out immediately after my chemistry exam, if nothing gets delayed, then there’s a chance, a slim one, that I can make it halfway around the world in time. 

But even so, am I willing to? 

The last time I was in Singapore was before I stepped foot on Stanford’s campus. I remember imagining what life would be like if I had grown up there instead of in the States, if my relationship with my extended family, with my culture, would have been different. 

I remember the moment I said goodbye to my grandfather very distinctly. As I paused in the entryway to put my shoes on, I remember looking up the stairs and knowing with full confidence that it was going to be the last time I ever saw him. My eyes were moist as I shut the door behind me and walked into the Singapore humidity. But I knew. 

Would I go back and say something different, do something different, now knowing that gut feeling was correct? I don’t think so.

When I left Singapore in September of 2024, I believed I would not return anytime soon. I was now a college student working in brutal eleven week cadences, filling my breaks with internships and the rare trip to another state or town to visit my friends. There was little time and little reason to be flying for a whole day back to Singapore. 

Perhaps my heart has been preemptively hardened to this loss. 

On Wednesday afternoon, I chug a Red Bull and take my chemistry exam. Afterwards, I head to lab and wrap up a couple experiments. Then, I bike home, eat dinner with my friends, and begin to study for biology.

I do not go to the airport. I do not go to Singapore.

It’s horrifically selfish. 

I do not tell anyone about my grandfather’s death. Instead, I plod along through the motions, completing practice exams, attending review sessions and organizing late night study sessions. I check-in on my friends, hand out Christmas cards and leave a box of Ghirardelli chocolate squares out in my hallway. 

I’m watching a recorded lecture at 2x speed when my family attends the funeral halfway around the world. When they bury him, I’m having dinner with the rest of my house.

I take my last exam on Friday afternoon, ending potentially my favorite quarter at Stanford. That night, I drive to the beach with my friends and we lay on the sand looking at shooting stars till the early hours of morning. Tomorrow, R&DE will close housing, firmly pushing me back to my hometown and the reality that I’ve been ignoring with Anki cards and energy drinks. But let me just have one last good night before I have to feel. 

Life moves slower at home, and grief cuts deeper. We play rounds of board games at night, the Christmas tree towers in the corner of the living room and our dog patters around the house happily. Yet, in the wake of it all, it doesn’t really feel like Christmas.

I fly out to Las Vegas on a whim after Christmas. It is partially for pleasure and partially for space. I have done my fair share of therapy exercises, validating my feelings and trying to understand what they mean and why I feel the way they do. But I’ve never worked on what it means to feel nothing.

I watch fireworks explode up and down the Las Vegas strip at midnight on New Years Eve. I don’t think once about my hometown or what reality waits for me back there. Only when I’m watching Las Vegas disappear as a speck beneath the clouds do I let my mind wander back to the truths that I cannot run from. 

The year is 2026. 

Grandpa, you will never see it.

My grandmother arrives from Singapore while I’m gone. She brings with her jewelry, watches and stories from a man who I barely know.

Knew. 

I leave for Stanford almost immediately. Biking down Jane Stanford Way against the wind, collapsing on the bean bag chairs in the lounge, sleeping in my luxurious college bed, this is the life I know. The one that is safe. I am not ready yet for the many conversations that will be had, the major milestones in grief that will pass and the irreversible changes that have occurred. 

I have lost and I will continue to lose the people that I love in this lifetime. I know with time, the numbness fades into something different: for some it loses its guilt, for some its love and for others its sadness. This collection of feelings is what I have left to remember everyone who has walked with me, and for now, that has to be enough.

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