I’ve spent the past year grieving the unknown. Not the loss of a person, at least not in the way grief is typically spoken about. But something subtler, slower. The kind of grief that doesn’t begin with absence but with presence that is quietly changing. The kind of grief that settles into your daily habits and seeps into your routines. Like the making of tea.
Tea has always been a gentle ritual in our house. No loud declarations, no grand ceremony. Just the soft clinking of cups, the hiss of the kettle, and the weight of familiarity. My dad’s day begins with tea. Not fancy, not fussy. The kind you drink slowly with the newspaper, the kind that feels like home. I never drank it the way he did. Even when I was younger, I couldn’t stomach the heaviness of milk tea. I pretended for a while, adding more sugar to hide the taste, sipping cautiously just to feel included. But as I grew older, I stopped pretending. I made the shift to black tea quietly. No explanation. No drama. Just one day, there was no milk in my cup.
It became my private thing, this bitter, thin brew that felt less like comfort and more like clarity. I told myself it was cleaner, more adult, more aligned with who I was becoming. But lately I wonder if the shift wasn’t about taste at all. Maybe it was a way of distancing myself from something I wasn’t ready to lose. The difference between our cups—his rich with milk, mine dark and bare—feels symbolic now. Like a growing space between the versions of us that once overlapped more easily. He still drinks his tea the same way. Every morning, like clockwork. I hear the spoon against the sides of the cup, the gentle slurp, the pause before he exhales. He doesn’t talk much in the mornings. Never has. My mother fills the room with conversation. But my father… he exists in silences. That used to frustrate me. Now it terrifies me. Because what if I forget the sound of that silence? What if I wake up one day and can’t remember what his mornings looked like?
I’ve become obsessed with holding onto things. With noticing.
What hand he holds the cup in.
How many biscuits he dips into the tea before stopping.
The exact shade of brown that tells me it’s been brewed the way he likes it.
I don’t think he knows I’m watching.
Some mornings I sit across from him, my black tea in hand, and wonder if he notices how different our drinks are. If he remembers that I never liked milk tea. If he notices how I’ve become quieter too. Maybe that’s what grief does, it makes you pay attention to things that used to go unnoticed. Makes you archive gestures and glances like they’re about to vanish. My grandmother’s dementia has made this urgency more real. She doesn’t drink tea anymore. Or at least, not the way she used to. She forgets if she’s already had a cup. Sometimes she asks for coffee even though she’s never liked it. Watching her unravel like this has broken something in my father, though he won’t admit it. He says, “At least she’s still here.” And I know what he means. But I also know he’s lying a little—to me, and to himself.
She’s not here, not entirely.
She’s somewhere else, in a mind that keeps deleting itself.
And I think that terrifies me more than death.
Because how do you mourn someone who still holds your hand, but no longer knows why?
So I hoard things.
Photos.
Screenshots.
Half-written voice memos.
700 pictures of skies and tea cups and empty chairs.
I keep increasing my cloud storage like I’m trying to bargain with time.
Trying to store enough to one day piece back a feeling I’m scared I’ll lose.
But I’ve realised that memory isn’t always accurate.
It mutates.
You don’t remember things the way they were,
you remember the way they made you feel.
And feelings are slippery.
What if I forget what kind of tea my dad liked?
What if I remember it wrong?
What if I think it was cardamom, when it was actually ginger?
What if I forget the number of sugar spoons, or the way he always cooled it with one sip before taking a real one?
That fear is what keeps me up some nights.
Not the fear of death, but the fear of forgetting the living.
The fear that I will outlive the sharpness of these memories.
That I’ll think of him and come up blank.
A silence, not unlike the one he carries.
So I make tea.
Every morning.
Even when I don’t want it.
Even when it tastes like ash.
Because it keeps me tethered to him.
To this house.
To the person I still am in this family.
Sometimes, when he’s in a good mood, my dad offers me a sip of his tea.
And I take it.
Even though I still don’t like it.
Even though it’s too sweet, too heavy.
Because in that moment, we’re closer.
Two people sharing warmth across very different cups.
And that’s all I need.
A small reminder that love doesn’t always look like agreement.
Sometimes it looks like sitting together in the early morning light, drinking completely different teas—
but quietly, stubbornly, still drinking together.
—Edited by Eshani Bhattacharjee | Design by Surabhi Chhikara
Article 19 