I know an abundance of people my age or younger who have accomplished multitudes. Wherever I look, I hear about or find celebrated and successful people, my parents' age. Yet, it must be the feeling of contentedness I have with my life that never makes me want to live another.

However, all that changes when I think of my grandmother. The perfect life that she had, and the ones that she didn't have.

My grandfather had a sudden death when I was 4. The impact it had on my life was huge. Nonetheless, there's something that I always think about. A few minutes into the biggest nightmare of my life, I decided to console my grandmother, despite the heart-ache I was going through. Along with the numerous "saaravilla"s (Malayalam for it's okay), I promised her that I will help her marry someone soon enough. My grandmother's sudden anger-filled response confused the neural networks in my brain- like the chihuahua-muffin-computer-vision meme. And even though all of us joke about it as a family now, and even though I dearly miss the most perfect man in the world (my eyes are burning with tears as I type this), why is it not okay for a 60 year old woman from a small town in Kerala to have a second chance at love?

I love thinking about the time my grandparents had together, raising a family of three kids, teaching hundreds of children, committing to social work and most of all, loving and caring for each other. Yet, despite her perfect marriage and her wonderful kids who look after her now with all the love in the world, why does my heart have to ache when I think of the lives she didn't get to lead?

Because every time I try picturing her past, I think of the times she must have had to sacrifice her hobbies to raise her children, the times she had to work hard to make ends meet, and the physical and mental turmoil she must have gone through to power through life in general as a woman in those times. But most of all, it's the fact that we live in a world where having a wonderful partner is considered as the only prerequisite for happiness.

Mummy (my grandmother) started writing a few years after my grandfather passed away. She published a few books of poetry, all on her own. A woman who was always associated with her husband, started to make a space of her own in this world. And it makes me wonder. Would things have been different if she had chosen to stay single, like she wanted to before she met the love of her life? Maybe she would have produced songs with her self-portraits as the album art, like Joni Mitchell. Or maybe she would have led an even smaller life owing to the absence of a partner, in a society like ours, that too in the 70s. Well, we'd never know.

Be that as it may, I will forever be grateful to have been a part of the beautiful story that my grandparents created together.

Here's a song of Joni Mitchell that I absolutely love! For you :)