hüzün.

What does loss mean to us on an individual level? When Marisol's grandmother passed away she locked herself in her room for days, an easel and paint her only company. Using nothing but her fingertips, she painted her grandmother's face from memory. When she finished, she took the piece straight to the funeral home, paint still wet. Years later, it hangs proudly in her home. If you look at it closely, you can see how she used her hands to caress into shape what became her grandmother's cheeks. I wonder if sometimes, alone at home, Marisol reaches towards the easel and strokes those cheeks, in remembrance.

***

When Doña Mercedes passed away, everyone expressed their grief by showing up at her home, forming a large prayer circle and reciting the rosary - participating in this was how I learned all the prayers in Spanish. The rosary was said each night for nine nights following her death. There was no music or food afterwards. It all felt so intense, so elaborate. It made me think about the deaths that occur every single day, and how if I want to grieve for everyone, I'd might as well keep these prayers on an ongoing loop in my head. And then I wonder: what does loss mean to whole cultures, entire peoples who have learned to live with loss as a constant companion?

***

There are the deaths, the big losses, but there are also smaller, everyday losses, the 'tiny deaths' of our spirit that occur when someone corrects our mother's english, when our cousins get stop and frisked, when our friends get beat up outside gas stations simply for wearing a hijab. What does loss mean in the face of the world's relentless and habitual unfairness?

One rainy spring afternoon I sat on a dorm room floor with one of my closest friends. We shared stories of our grandparents, our mothers, our cousins, we shared the memories of hurt that sit right at the tip of our tongues. After a moment of silence, my friend pulls out a book from her bag and reads to me about a group of people in Guinea who carry the sky on their heads. These people are considered strong, tall, mighty. They can bear anything. We teared up and held hands as she read, "if you see a lot of trouble in your life, it is because you were chosen to carry part of the sky on your head." At least for that moment, as we sat still to the sounds of rain hitting our windowsill, we felt comfort in those words and in each other.