Nothing hurts more than grieving someone that’s alive.

Some of us know this type of grief too well, the kind where the person you love is still here, but slowly slipping away. And if you don’t, may that remain one of your biggest blessings. Because grieving someone who’s still alive is a quiet heartbreak. There’s no official goodbye. Just small losses that build over time. A forgotten face. A story that doesn’t come back. A name that once meant everything, suddenly unfamiliar.

But before we get lost in the grief, let me tell you about the woman who brought me some of my greatest joy and my quietest heartbreak.

There are people you don’t just grow up with, you grow from. My grandmother is one of them.

Her name is Aisha — meaning life — and she lived up to every part of it. She was full of presence. In her younger years, they used to call her a tomboy. She had fire. A strong will. The kind of woman who didn’t follow the flow, she created it. She was also poetic. Her words weren’t just heard, they were felt. I’d try to keep up, decoding the metaphors behind her phrases, usually ending with her laughing and calling me out for missing the point.

I used to sneak little videos of her, hoping I’d figure out the meaning one day. Watching them back, I see it now — she was speaking in layers. Her words carried more weight than I realized. Things I brushed off as jokes or stories were actually lessons I wasn’t ready to learn yet.

She spoke in gabay and laced her conversations with maahmaahyo. She had so many layers to her and in many ways, she still does. Tough and tender. Wise and witty. She didn’t just raise a generation, she really rooted us. And in so many ways, she raised me too.

The last time I saw her, she didn’t remember my name. And I didn’t expect that moment to break me the way it did. She recognized something, my face maybe, or just the feeling of familiarity. She smiled, she let me hold her hand. But the connection I remembered, the one rooted in years of stories, confidence boosts, poetry, and moments of us laughing and dancing in the living room… it was hazy. Like a word on the tip of her tongue.

That’s the part no one tells you about — the mental weight. It messes you up. It hits you in waves. You see pieces of them. You catch a laugh, a prayer, a gesture, and for a second, you think there she is. But it fades too quickly. How strange and painful it is to be afraid of losing someone who is still technically here. It feels ironic. I don’t know how much she remembers of me now. But I remember everything. And maybe for now, that’s enough for both of us.

Sometimes I wonder how she must feel. What does it feel like to forget, but know that something’s missing? To hear a voice that feels familiar, but not be able to place where it belongs? To sense love in a room and not remember why it’s there?

Even if she can’t name the memories she’s lost, I imagine her body remembers. I imagine grief lives somewhere in her, quietly, without names or dates or context. And what about the painful memories? The ones we hope she forgets but aren’t sure she truly does. Like my uncle’s passing. What must it be like to hear, again and again, that your child is gone? To feel the rawness of that loss fresh each time, because for her, it is new every time. Imagine reliving the moment your heart breaks… without knowing you’ve been through it before.

I think about that a lot. Not just because I miss who she was, but because I don’t know what she carries now. But then I remember her fitrah. It amazes me. Even when everything else begins to slip, she remembers Allah. She remembers to whisper dhikr under her breath. To pause for salah on time. To say alhamdulillah even when her world must feel unfamiliar.

It reminds me of the verse 13:28

“Indeed, in the remembrance of Allah do hearts find rest.”

Her heart still knows where to rest. And maybe that’s what brings me peace. If the heart remembers Allah, is anything truly lost?