The Bottom Line

It feels like yesterday my dadu was here, her worry about my height a constant refrain. She’d always say I needed a man of reasonable stature, not too towering but tall enough to complement me. Dadu, I think I’ve found one, a man who stands firm and steady, like the support beams holding up a crumbling ceiling. I don’t know how long he’ll stay, but I want to tell her about him. And about everything that’s happened since she left. We never spoke much, so every time I think of her, I’m reminded of my father. A man firm and steady, the man she raised. My father, her child.

They say poetic things about death, but they never tell you how it looks on your father. Not just emotionally, but physically, biologically, permanently. At nearly six feet, my father was always taller. But my dadu’s death seemed to shrink him by an inch or two. I never saw him cry, but I watched him grow a little shorter. I saw it as he left for Chittagong, where my dadu lived her life and died, and then a little more each time he spoke of her in the past tense.

If losing someone was temporary, how could it change your biology? My dadu had lost a child, a husband, her parents, and everyone she grew up with. Maybe that’s why she was so short. Maybe that’s why older people hunch over, their backs curving like ancient banyan trees, not just with age but with the weight of all they’ve lost.