Today was my aunt’s funeral. She told us she didn’t want a conventional ceremony, she wanted a political riot. So we started out chanting “Fuck Cancer!” and the rest was herstory.
I was one of the first to speak. And I didn’t really do much of that. Mostly I sobbed. I wanted to howl. Every word felt crass in comparison. Like subterfuge. Words felt cruel, just another failed cancer treatment. No sentence is a spell. Nothing can bring her back.
My aunt told us that Urvashi was the first one in our Indian family to say “I love you.” It’s not that we don’t love each other, it’s that we show it with action, and squirm at the word. Urvashi had learned how to claim it from her queer community. My late grandmother told my aunt that she only felt comfortable saying it back because of Urvashi’s persistence.
It’s a lesson I’m learning again & again. Queer people teach the world what love is. We fight for love because we know what it feels like to lose it. How tragic, those who shun us. Because they shun love.
I grew up in a family where we tried our best to protect each other from our pain. And we called that love. We spent so much time worried about how each other would react to our feelings that we forgot to feel them: our feelings.
Queer people taught me how to feel in public. How to weep, and shout, and shriek with joy. And today I think I brought that back home. Gave permission for us all to feel in front of one another. Flagrantly, without decorum. Runny noised and feral.
Everything feels blurry in my life right now. I keep missing trains and getting off at the wrong stop. I leave the house and feel like I forgot something: my keys, an umbrella. But then I remember that it’s just her. That I am missing her in every street corner and email notification. I spend hours scrolling through texts and photos and videos and each one feels haunted and conspicuously time stamped. Like if only I had known. Would I have texted her that I loved her? Would I have said it back?
This is the year I learn how to say “I love you” back. For Urvashi, for me, and for us.
Thank you for your support my beautiful community. I love and need you very much.