On memory, language, and leading a life with intention
We don’t get to choose our hardest chapters. Grief, like a sudden plot twist, arrives without warning and without instruction. When my grandmother, my teta, passed away, I was heartbroken. What followed, however, wasn’t just loss. It was a question. A quiet, unspoken question that still lingers: How do I carry her with me?
“When you are sorrowful look again in your heart, and you shall see that in truth you are weeping for that which has been your delight.” — Khalil Gibran
My teta was a storyteller. Some of my most vivid memories are of her sharing tales from her childhood in a small Lebanese village. She told me about waking before dawn to bake bread with her family and walking to the market with her father to sell fruit from their garden. She had seen war, famine, and loss, but you’d never guess it from her laughter. She was playful, full of jokes, always pulling little pranks. Her joy was deliberate, and Her love was fierce. She made me feel like I was the most precious treasure in the world.
Even now, I feel closest to her through stories. Sometimes, that story is a memory, like the way she’d braid my hair and call it shabshoulet el dara, or “corn hair,” because of its light color. Sometimes, it’s a recipe, like her spinach pies. I remember watching her fold the dough with the precision of someone who had made the same motion a thousand times. Her cooking wasn’t just nourishment. It was love in physical form.
Perhaps the most profound way I’ve tried to stay connected to her is through learning Arabic.
When she became ill, I began recording her. I have hours of stories, songs, and reflections I knew I would want to return to. In one of those recordings, I heard her say something that changed me. She wanted me to learn Arabic. It wasn’t a command. It was a wish, a thread she handed me, trusting I’d carry it forward. Today, I’m learning to read, write, and speak the language that holds her memories, her jokes, and her songs. Arabic challenges me. In that challenge, however, I feel a deep sense of grounding. I feel closer not just to her, but to a part of myself that was waiting to be remembered.
In all of this- the cooking, the language, the stories- I’m beginning to understand something bigger about grief. It doesn’t just live in absence. It lives in action. It lives in how we braid our hair, how we stir the dough, how we speak a word that connects us to generations past. Grief asks, what now? And love answers, this.
Since losing her, I’ve made big choices in my life. Not out of urgency, but out of intention. Her passing reminded me that life is fragile. So in return, meaning is something we can create. She led her life with courage and care. I want to lead mine the same way.
This chapter of grief was never part of the plan. Yet I have come to understand that sadness is not something to be feared. The joy of love and the pain of loss come together, intertwined. Grief has shaped me into a quieter kind of leader- one who listens more deeply, remembers more intentionally, and builds a future by honoring the past.