My family is a big one - the youngest of four siblings, our home was loud and busy. Even after my siblings moved out and started their families, the busyness continued. Yet, a part of me, from a young age, felt I was not quite ‘complete’. A quiet voice that said ‘there is something missing here.’
My maternal grandparents, still alive when I was born, were back in Punjab, India, and my paternal grandfather has passed before I was born. He was survived by his wife (my step-grandmother) and Dad and his siblings (a brother and two sisters from my grandfather’s second marriage). I was unaware that my grandmother was my step-grandmother, as my parents chose not to tell me. Through conversations and interactions with extended family, I figured out that Dad had been an only child when his mother passed. He was just a toddler and my grandfather had remarried when Dad was about 13. I did not to think much of it - family is family.
When I was 12, Mum told me about my biological grandmother. My Bibiji (paternal grandmother), Gurmeet Kaur, fondly known as Meeto, passed in the early 1950’s. She was survived by her parents, older brother (Dad’s maternal uncle or Mamaji) and Dad. Eventually, Meeto’s entire family moved to Canada, except her mother, who passed away in Punjab at some point during the 1960s/70s.
After Meeto’s passing, Dad was raised mainly by his paternal grandmother, fondly known as Maa Ji (for whom I can feel nothing but respect and love, despite not knowing her), as well as his paternal aunts and uncles. He developed close relationships with his paternal cousins. We have no pictures of my Meeto, but according to Dad’s cousin (through his father’s sister), my eldest sister resembles her most closely. My family had met Meeto’s father, brother and sister-in-law and their family on different occasions, including my parent’s wedding and the family’s visits to the UK. Over the years, I asked my parents about Meeto’s family - what were they like, how did they live, what did they do? Dad did not share much in these conversations but Mum told me all that she could. Our families had lost touch either just before or after I was born.
Between the ages of 12 and 28, I would search for the family on Google. After years of searching, I had accepted that the most I would know about them were the snippets that my parents could tell me and learned to be okay with that. We had pictures of the family - I had one on display for one of Dad’s milestone birthdays so that he had a part of Meeto with him. In September 2023, I asked Dad if he remembered Meeto’s family’s names - he did. He and Mum tried to remember how many children his cousins had, who they had met and when.
A few weeks later, in October 2023 I attended the Taraki Punjabi Women’s session on grief. The next evening, perhaps spurred on by the previous night’s discussion, I entered Meeto’s brother’s name on Google, followed by the area of Canada he had lived in. Not sure what I would find, I hit ‘enter’. The first result was an obituary of someone of the same name - clicking on the link, my eyes were drawn to a picture. I had seen pictures of Meeto’s brother before, but it was the resemblance between this man and Dad that surprised me. I was sure I had found him. I scanned the obituary - there was mention of the village where Dad was born (Meeto’s childhood home). More scrolling - names of family members (perhaps my cousins?) - all the way down to a video - speeches from the funeral. I skipped through, capturing bits of the eulogies, trying to spot any resemblance in the faces on the screen. There was a slideshow - I grabbed my laptop and took it to Mum to confirm what I had found.
Telling Dad was one of the most joyful yet painful things I have had to do in my life. I saw the happiness in his face when I told him that I had found the family, and then the pain cross it briefly when I told him that his Mamaji had passed away so recently (just over a year before). I saw a flash of the little boy that grew up without his mother on his aged face.
I was not sure what to do next. After coming down from the high of finding my long lost family after all of these years, I began to wonder what came next. Do I reach out? Or shall I leave it, content knowing that they were out there, together and safe. After all, it had been at least 29 years since our families had spoken.
Yet a small part of me felt that maybe, just maybe, they were curious too. At the end of the month, I decided to reach out to the funeral home, asking them to pass my contact details onto the family, should they like to reach out. About a week later, I got an email from my cousin - we had a video call a couple of days later and everything changed.
I had new family! I found my fourth corner - my features, my quirks, they all made sense.
About 7 months later, I made my way to Canada to meet the family in person, and stayed with Dad’s cousin who welcomed me with open arms. For someone who has not taken much risk in life, this was a massive leap of faith for me. I was not sure what to expect.
Much of this experience was raw and emotional, but my life feels fuller than ever. I have met all ofthese new people, including Meeto’s friend that attended school with her until they were around 10 years old! They all mean the world and more to me and I cannot express how grateful I am for the space that they made for me - it’s like I’ve known them forever.
Why was this experience important?
At family gatherings, be it weddings, funerals or birthdays, you’ll often hear stories of our fathers, grandfathers, great-grandfathers - their struggles, their sacrifices and their efforts. Stories about our mothers, grandmothers and great-grandmothers are less colourful, in my experience. You’ll hear how they came over to the UK once everything was ready and that they were wonderful mothers, sisters, aunties. We are told little of their experiences, journeys or their pain.
Before actively seeking out information about Meeto, I have little memory of anyone speaking about her. I watched my cousins and friends with their grandmothers. Not only did I not have Meeto with me, I knew nearly nothing about her. I’m pretty sure I did not know her name until I was in my 20s.
We did not speak about her - I knew my family were different from our other relatives but could not say why. There was almost a sense of shame that did not allow us to speak about her.
On shame, Brene Brown says:
“Shame hates when we reach out and tell our story. It hates having words wrapped around it - it can’t survive being shared. Shame loves secrecy. The most dangerous thing to do after a shaming experience is hide or bury our story. When we bury our story, the shame metastasises.” - Brené Brown, The Gifts of Imperfection
Meeto became a distant memory for us - rarely spoken of, mentioned only in passing. Despite Dad and the family he and Mum had built being living mementos of Meeto - we were almost like leaves blowing in the wind.
The experience showed me how humans bury grief. In denying grief, we lose memories, experiences and ultimately hurt ourselves. In chapter six of Brene Brown’s Atlas of the Heart she explores ‘places we go when we’re hurting’, including anguish and grief.
“Anguish not only takes away our ability to breathe, feel and think - it comes for our bones. Anguish often causes us to physically crumple in on ourselves, literally bringing us to our knees or forcing us all the way to the ground. The element of powerlessness is what makes anguish traumatic. We are unable to change, reverse, or negotiate what has happened. And even in those situations where we can temporarily reroute anguish with to-do lists and tasks, it finds its way back to us.” - Brené Brown, Atlas of the Heart
Brene explains that when you do not get support after experiencing anguish, you can find it hard get back up and move through life. Alternatively, you can avoid addressing the trauma of anguish by hanging it on “rigidity and perfectionism and silence” - hiding pain, instead of confronting it. I think this is something we see more than we know. Meeto’s mother never left Punjab - not when Dad moved to the UK with his father, and not when her son and his family went to Canada. She chose to stay in Punjab.
Meeto’s father would travel between Canada and India until her passing, then he moved to Canada permanently. Since learning about Meeto I have wondered why her mother stayed. Was it so that her little girl was not left behind, alone? Was this her way of rerouting her anguish? Getting on with life, but not letting go?
When considering the life changing events our parents, grandparents and great grandparents went through, you wonder how they got through it - there certainly would not have been access to the support to spaces to express that exist now. There is hope, however, of reclaiming life after anguish - it requires time and support, and in my experience, space to just be. But oh how I wish I could sit with Meeto’s mother and take some of her pain away.
How has this experience encouraged more sharing in my family?
Since reconnecting with Meeto’s family, Dad has shared little snippets of his childhood with us. A personal favourite was that Meeto was making tandoori roti when she went into labour with him - perhaps that’s why he likes it so!
The one that has stuck with me is how, after discovering he had a maternal family, he ran away from home to find them.
Picture rural Punjab, in the 1960’s, and a little boy, roughly aged 10, with no money, travelling on foot and via rickshaw where possible. Meeto and her family were from a village in another city, while Dad lived in a village some 20 miles away.
Dad remembers convincing his friend to go with him to find his Meeto’s family. They made their way, ending up in the wrong village. Luckily, this happened to be his Mamiji’s village (Meeto’s brother’s wife) - a local resident kindly took him to Meeto’s childhood home which was the next village over.
When Dad arrived, everyone was so excited! ‘Meeto’s son has come, Meeto’s son has come’ they proclaimed. He was there for three days - his Naniji (maternal grandmother) had a new kurta pyjama set made for him and he met and played with his cousins. His Nanaji (maternal grandfather) eventually sent him and his friend back home - ‘they will be worrying about you’ he had said.
My Chachaji (paternal uncle), Meeto’s brother’s son remembers this day too - he said the whole village came to his house see my Dad, a memento of the village’s beloved daughter.
Dad and his friend made it back home (they had been given money to get the bus), and life went on. When Dad eventually shared this, he had been with Mum for nearly 45 years, building a life, a home and a family together. Not once had this story come up and I wonder whether Dad would have ever shared this with us if the families had not reconnected.
Before I move on, I want to take moment to thank Dad’s friend for accompanying him. That interaction meant that Dad was able to meet his mother’s family again, at his wedding, when his Mamaji’s family visited the UK, all for us to reconnect 60 years after that three-day adventure.
How did this experience empower me?
On the last day of my stay with Meeto’s family, I met one of her cousins, who is the same age she would be now. He is one of the only people, if not the only person, alive today that truly knew and remembers her. He recounted her life experience, from childhood to the events that followed her passing. He cried, I cried. It was the final piece of the puzzle I had been able to put together through my other meetings with her relatives and friends.
As I was leaving, he said to me in Punjabi that: “aaj menu api bhehan di nishani mil gayi” (today I met a memento of my sister).
My heart rejoiced and broke in the same moment. Before I explain what that meant, here’s a little insight into me. This trip took place just before my 30th birthday and my life looks different to how I expected it to look. Call is kismet, karma, poor timing - whatever. We are all on our own paths and journeys, but I am human and some days that makes me sadder than others. As such, I have had moments in life, thinking I was an inconsequential being, just taking up space that could be better used by someone else. What did I really bring to the table?
But hearing Meeto’s cousin say that sentence, after a thirty minute meeting before I caught a flight to leave the city, changed my brain chemistry.
No being is inconsequential. We each have a purpose that we fulfil, and we impact the lives of those around us so profoundly. The butterfly effect. It’s a wonder that we are ever in a position to doubt it. You will meet people in your life that will make you realise your purpose, your worth, your value, even if you struggle to see it yourself.
That’s not to say that I do not still have days where I wonder where life is taking me - like I said, I am human. But this whole experience taught me the power of glimmers, of hope, of gratitude.
This sequence of events was triggered by a discussion on grief. My understanding and experience of grief has since changed. I’ve been grieving not only my grandmother, but the memories and experiences that could have been, the time lost with her family and the time lost not knowing about her. Life demands our presence, with every new day drawing our attention away from the day before. Each one of us has been focused on reconstructing our worlds, despite the losses we faced.
“‘When a person adapts to a loss grief is not over.’ It doesn't mean that we're sad the rest of our lives, it means that ‘grief finds a place’ in our lives. Imagine a world in which we honour that place in ourselves and others rather than hiding it, ignoring it, or pretending it doesn't exist.” - Brené Brown, Atlas of the Heart
I had not been sure if Meeto’s brother ever knew about me - he had met my siblings on his visits to the UK, but not me. Before he passed, he had commissioned a family tree dating back to the 1700s. My new-found family showed me the print and almost immediately, I saw my name. There I was. There were my siblings, Mum, Dad - and Meeto. Accounted for, recorded, consequential.
Meeto was never gone. She was always there, especially for her brother, and he did what he could to keep the memory of his sister alive while living with his grief. Meeto’s existence left imprints on people’s memories - her cousins remember her, and they remember the love she had for Dad (he never left her side if Meeto could help it).
It is so important that we share with our families, our grief, our experiences, the stories of those that came before us. If we do not talk about the hard stuff or feel the hard feelings - we lose out on the beauty of life. This experience has made me start to unlearn and rebuild my understanding of life, and myself, bit-by-bit. It has been a stripping back of what I thought was my identity - and I no longer choose to numb. I’ll leave you with this:
“You can't numb those hard feelings without numbing the other affects, our emotions. You cannot selectively numb. So when we numb those, we numb joy, we numb gratitude, we numb happiness.” - Brené Brown, The Power of Vulnerability: Teachings of Authenticity, Connections and Courage
By Meeto’s Granddaughter / ਮੀਤੋ ਦੀ ਪੋਤੀ
