On the last day of each year, the death an­niver­sary of my broth­er Varun ( I don’t like the word “pass”—its too eu­phemistic, too slight, dis­mis­sive, as our beloved dead ca­su­al­ly walked out the door for eter­ni­ty—for the enor­mi­ty for the end of a hu­man life) I wake with a sense of dread a sand­bag weigh­ing on my chest.

In re­cent years as the day pro­gress­es on­to mid­night, the hu­man heart is such that a re­cal­i­bra­tion takes place as the sub­con­scious al­lows ac­cep­tance of things I can’t change, mem­o­ry makes him alive in my heart, and some­how the re­la­tion­ship be­tween us is re­stored.

In the last few years, as the sun grows high in the sky on the 31st, I mar­vel anew at how my broth­er’s grand­son was born on the an­niver­sary of his death, write a card for my fa­ther whose birth­day is on the 1st, and just like that the sand­bag is re­moved, and the emp­tied heart gets a re­boot.

Re­plen­ish­ment min­gles freely in the cham­bers of our hearts, not dis­tin­guish­ing be­tween the past and the present, the liv­ing and dead, the tem­po­ral and in­cor­po­re­al...It doesn’t take much.

A song that re­minds you of the good times, an un­ex­pect­ed phone call when you were some­one else in an­oth­er time, cook­ing for peo­ple who will ap­pre­ci­ate your hand, ri­fling through your clos­et for some­thing whim­si­cal and the day is sal­vaged.

And be­cause I write to un­tan­gle the strands of my heart, it’s the clos­est I get to prayer. When mid­night strikes some ver­sion of auld ac­quain­tance, a kind of hope is re­stored.

That’s the drill.

This year it’s dif­fer­ent from all years. The world has changed in a way that I would have nev­er imag­ined in my life­time, so even while I live it, I can see my­self root­ed in his­to­ry, in a time that peo­ple will look back on and try to com­pre­hend.

From last March to now—21 months be­fore the first coro­n­avirus came in, I be­gan writ­ing about it to un­der­stand it. Over these months, like you, dear read­er, I’ve ri­fled through thou­sands of ar­ti­cles, looked with dis­be­lief at the im­ages now flip­ping through my brain like an old-time slide show, the peo­ple col­lapsed on the streets in Brazil the cross­es in Italy, the mass graves in Amer­i­ca, the miles of fu­ner­al pyres in In­dia.

I’ve stayed awake till dawn dur­ing a lock­down, lis­ten­ing for the roar­ing of li­ons and the cho­rus of crea­tures pre­vi­ous­ly drowned out by traf­fic, looked at sil­very dawn and thought even beau­ty un­bear­able.

The bizarre thing about it is that we were giv­en the heads up to this prob­a­bil­i­ty when the virus left Wuhan and made its way to Italy be­fore bleed­ing out in­to the veins of the world’s peo­ple, not see­ing colour, pass­port, or ge­og­ra­phy.

It’s the re­verse idea of the utopia John Lennon spoke of—the world as one snaking its way as the poi­son of our cen­tu­ry per­me­at­ing economies, leav­ing peo­ple home­less, with­out food, with­out shel­ter, shut­ting down busi­ness­es, leav­ing chil­dren friend­less and with­out learn­ing, caging peo­ple, cre­at­ing po­lit­i­cal up­heaval over vac­cines, eras­ing joy, di­vid­ing peo­ple over the vac­cine, pulling off veils as rough­ly as you would peo­ples skins.

Hope will not come easy this year. First, we must learn to grieve. The hu­man can­not grasp num­bers at this lev­el. It’s im­pos­si­ble to have a light mo­ment when you’re read­ing new fa­cil­i­ties to store the dead in To­ba­go or Freeport and hear these con­ver­sa­tions echo in na­tion af­ter na­tion.

As I write, the New Year’s Eve num­bers come in. 19 dead to­day across Trinidad and To­ba­go. Clos­ing the year with over 2,850 dead in our tiny is­lands in the Caribbean. The glob­al num­bers have gal­loped to 5.43 mil­lion. But now Om­ri­con is here.

Hope comes in know­ing it will be the dom­i­nant virus, that it’s far less vir­u­lent than the Delta ver­sion.

I’m talk­ing my­self in­to deal­ing with grief.

De­nial; Anger; Bar­gain­ing and a grudg­ing Ac­cep­tance.

I’m min­gling the philoso­phies of my par­ents that guide me, that ser­vice to oth­ers is the on­ly thing worth any­thing in our brief lives snatched with ca­su­al bru­tal­i­ty; that calami­ty re­fines us, re­places pride with em­pa­thy.

I’m re­mem­ber­ing my broth­ers’ hope­ful last smile even dur­ing the treat­ment that didn’t work, of hope.

“Hope” as Emi­ly Dick­in­son wrote in a po­em in 1861 “is the thing with feath­ers That perch­es in the soul And sings the tune with­out the words, And nev­er stops at all.” I wish you, dear read­er, an ex­ca­va­tion of the cham­bers of your heart, restor­ing some warmth, and ush­er­ing a hope­ful 2022.