This time last year, everyone I lost in 2024 was still alive. It’s surreal to think that twelve months ago, I had no idea what was to come. While I naively prepared a list of New Year’s resolutions at my uncle’s house in Colorado, and it snowed outside, what I didn’t know was that I’d live through the deaths of five significant people in my life — one after another. Each death has been uniquely painful. Each one marking the end of an entire, unrepeatable universe.
So it’s no shock that by the time I heard about the passing of my dear aunt Shoira last week — a radiant woman who helped raise me and a rare source of peace in my otherwise dramatic family — I wasn’t even surprised. I’ve grown quite used to the steady stream of devastating news from relatives. Instead, my reaction was oddly lucid: I was glad to have spent quality time with her during my stay in Uzbekistan last year, and I thought she had lived a wonderful life, especially with her long list of health complications.
It’s not that I don’t feel the pain of this loss; it’s that the accumulated grief is so immense I can’t really process it. I know it will all eventually find me, as it has been doing, bit by bit.
This past year was one in which I was arrested by grief. It didn’t come for me in the way I had expected: deep wails in public or an intense desire to be comforted by others. Instead, it crept in quietly, slipping into the stillness of the night when I was at my most vulnerable. It stopped me from falling asleep, or worse, jolted me awake in the early hours, holding my mind hostage until the first light of dawn and the sound of birdsong. This insomnia would roll into groggy mornings and frustratingly unproductive afternoons.
I also couldn’t linger in stillness for too long in the daytime. Whenever my mind would edge toward general sadness or painful memories, I instinctively reached for my phone and washed my brain out with some of the stupidest parts of the internet. Throughout the year, my screen time spiralled, evident in the fact that I managed to read only 16 books (I usually get through around 50, one a week). Books demand the strength of sitting with your thoughts, of engaging with the unsettling places inside your mind. And that, I suspect, was precisely why I avoided them.
The biggest shift, though, is just how bleak my outlook on the future has become. My inability to muster up even a small amount of hope is usually a telltale sign of my depression. Yet I can’t tell whether this is another tendril of grief wrapping itself around me or a proportionate reaction to world news.
The signs for the end of days are here, I keep thinking. Conflict zones have grown by two-thirds globally in the past few years. Climate change is driving food and freshwater insecurity. Far-right extremism is palpably on the rise in Europe. The development of AI has been too rapid to regulate. Even thinking 25 years ahead — the length of an average mortgage — feels silly. What will my city look like in 2050? Will my partner and I have jobs in five years?
I’m aware that I may be seeing everything through a worst-case-scenario filter, but I think because I’ve lived through so much death this year — most of it very unexpected — it’s been hard to picture things any other way. It’s like my mind is trying to prepare me for every terrible eventuality, to make sure I’m never caught off guard again. But that’s no way to live. I know that.
As the new year approaches, I grapple with what it means to move forward with such a heavy heart. I want to honour the incredible people I’ve had the privilege of knowing: my uncle Farrukh, my grandmother Nazokat, our family friend Kamola, my grandfather’s sister Mahbuba, and my aunt Shoira. I think of them every day, as well as my friend Toby, who we lost in 2023.
If there’s one thing this grief has forced me to confront, it’s the fragile, fleeting nature of time. Death strips away the illusion of endless tomorrows, leaving you with the unrelenting truth: every moment matters, and none of it is guaranteed.
These past few years have been so devoted to work and figuring out career moves that this bigger picture of life has all but disappeared for me. Now, spurred by these losses, I want to live more fully in 2025. I’m struck by how much of this world I’ve yet to explore, how many books I’ve yet to read, and how many experiences I’m desperate to have. I want to write, get stuck into creative projects and make art. Most of all, I want to form precious memories with family and friends. In the end, they are all that we have.
What I’ve been reading
Ordinary Human Failings by Megan Nolan. This was the novel I picked up to get myself back into reading again, and I found the writing very observant. Set in the early 1990s, an Irish family moves to London to start afresh after a young woman’s teenage pregnancy. Yet when a tragedy unfolds on their estate, their neighbours and the media begin pointing the finger at them. It reads like a thriller, as you try to find out who is responsible for the death of a young child, but it also gives you an intimate look into every family member with beautifully crafted and deeply human backstories.
Wandering Souls by Cecile Pin. To my shame, I didn’t know much about Vietnam or the devastating twenty-year war, but I found this beautiful story to be a great gateway into learning about the adversity faced by Vietnamese refugees (and then doing further research). This novel follows a family of three siblings who try to make their new home in Thatcher’s Britain. Stricken with grief, they have to build their lives in a country that is, at times, very hostile to them. I won’t spoil why the book is so touching, but it’s a good one.
The Starmer Project by Oliver Eagleton. I am halfway through this, and I would say it’s essential reading to understand Starmer’s career history, which has shaped the current prime minister’s style of governance.
Thanks so much for subscribing to windowsill and for your patience. I don’t know when I will write next, so I hope you had a great Christmas and trust that you will welcome 2025 in style! See you next year.