Someone I love died and I don't know how to carry the grief
On loss, mourning that is real versus performed, and where the weight can finally rest.
Someone is gone, and you wake into a house that is the wrong shape now. The grief is not a single feeling — it lurches between numbness and a weight you can't put down, between wanting people around you and finding their words unbearable. You suspect you are doing it wrong: crying at the wrong moments, not crying when you should, going through motions that feel performed even to you. And underneath it all is the question of how a person is supposed to keep carrying a love that no longer has anywhere to go.
Tukaram does not tell you to be strong, and he does not tell you the loss is illusion. What he does, again and again, is refuse to let grief be faked or carried alone. He notices the difference between mourning that is real and mourning that is performed — the tears that are secretly for something else (Abhang 116), the crowd that runs to the riverbank but never jumps in (Abhang 238). And then, having insisted on honesty, he shows where the unbearable weight can finally go: not onto your own back, but laid down — देवाचिये माथां घालुनियां भार, "place the load on God's head" (Abhang 1289); विसांवया विसांवया, पडों देई पायां, "let me just rest, let me fall at the feet" (Abhang 1264).
His hardest and most consoling word is that the people we love were never the ones holding us up — even मायबापें, mother and father, finally hand us over to death (Abhang 1781) — and that the silence after a loss, terrifying as it is, is not pure abandonment. It can become एकांत, a solitude that turns out to have a companion in it (Abhang 15), and the flatness that follows grief, सुखदुःखाचें खंडन, the cancelling of joy-and-sorrow, need not be the same thing as despair (Abhang 47).
Abhang 238 — Run to the bank, or jump in
आपलिया रडती भावें । जयासवें जयापरी ॥ तुका म्हणे धांवती थडी । न घली उडी आंत कोणी ॥
When the gopāl is suddenly gone from their hands, each mourner cries by their own bhāva — by whatever their particular bond was. Tukaram's first gift here is permission: grief is not uniform, and you do not owe anyone a grief that matches theirs. His sharp second word is the image of the crowd that runs to the riverbank but never jumps in — they witness without entering. Gathering, telling people, processing, posting — these are the bank. He names, gently, that real grief is the willingness to go into the deep with the one you lost rather than only stand at the edge of it.
Abhang 116 — The tears that were for the goats
प्रेम खरें दिसे जना । भिन्न अंतरीं भावना ॥ होता भाव पोटीं । मुखा आलासे शेवटीं ॥
A man weeps copiously during the sermon and everyone is moved by his devotion — but inside he is grieving his lost goats, their hooves and horns and four legs. The tears are real; they are simply for a different loss than the one he is performing. Tukaram's point is not to shame the man but to set you free: भाव पोटीं मुखा आलासे शेवटीं, "what is truly in the gut comes out at the mouth in the end." Whatever you are actually grieving will surface. The honest move in your own mourning is to stop measuring it against what grief is supposed to look like and simply name what is really moving you.
Abhang 1781 — The ones we love cannot hold us forever
मायबापें माझीं जीवाचीं सांगाती । तीं देतील हातीं काळाचिया ॥ तुका म्हणे मज तुझाची भरवसा । म्हणऊनि आशा मोकलिली ॥
This is the bleakest and most clear-eyed abhang here. Even मायबापें, mother and father — the closest companions of the soul — finally hand us into the hands of death; the world only witnesses our loss, it does not shelter us from it; मी एक निराळा परदेशी, "I am a foreigner here." It sounds like despair, but it turns: if no person and no possession was ever the thing holding you up, then the ground beneath grief was never the person you lost. Tukaram lets every false hope go and finds one thing that does not get handed over to death — तुझाची भरवसा, "trust in you alone." That is where a love can finally rest when its object is gone.
Abhang 1289 — Place the load on God's head
देवाचिये माथां घालुनियां भार । सांडीं किळवर ओंवाळूनि ॥ तुका म्हणे सांडीं लटिक्याचा संग । आनंद तो मग प्रगटेल ॥
The most practical word for the question itself — "I don't know how to carry the grief." Tukaram's answer is: you are not meant to carry it. देवाचिये माथां घालुनियां भार, "put the weight on God's head." The remarkable verb is ओंवाळूनि — wave the burden away the way you wave the āratī lamp in offering, a gesture of letting go rather than gripping. Set the load down where it can actually be held, and आनंद तो मग प्रगटेल, a quiet gladness — not a denial of the loss but something underneath it — can begin to surface again.
Abhang 1264 — Let me just rest
विठोबा विसांवया विसांवया । पडों देई पायां ॥ केली तुजसाटीं । तुका म्हणे येवढी आटी ॥
Sometimes grief asks nothing clever of us; it only wants to stop. This abhang is the exhausted traveler arriving — बहुक्षीदक्षीण, hungered and worn from the long forest road, having borne mockery at every other door he knocked on. He asks for one thing, said twice: विसांवया विसांवया, "rest, rest — just let me fall at your feet." When you are too tired to hold the weight or even to understand it, this is the whole prayer that's needed. You do not have to perform strength or arrive composed; you are allowed to come undone and simply lay yourself down.
Abhang 47 — When the flatness is not despair
गेले मानामान । सुखदुःखाचें खंडन ॥ तुका म्हणे चित्तीं । नाहीं वागवीत खंती ॥
After a great loss the world goes grey — good days and bad days blur, the categories that organized your life stop registering. From outside this looks like depression, and sometimes it is. But Tukaram names a second possibility: सुखदुःखाचें खंडन, the quiet cancelling of joy-and-sorrow that comes once you have truly let hope go. The test he offers is precise and merciful — is there खंती, a weight of sorrow still being carried inside? If the dimming comes wrapped in anguish, it is grief still working; if it comes with a strange absence of that weight, it may be the equanimity on the far side of grief, not its failure. The abhang gives you a way to read your own numbness honestly instead of fearing it.
Abhang 15 — The solitude that has a companion in it
फावला एकांत एकविध भाव । हरि आम्हांसवें सर्व भोगी ॥ तुका म्हणे अंगसंग एके ठायीं । असों जेथें नाहीं दुजें कोणी ॥
This is the far country of grief: the day the house is finally quiet and you have no one ahead of you and no one behind. Most of us read that silence as abandonment and rush to fill it. Tukaram offers another reading — that it may be एकांत, not loneliness but a solitude with one companion left in it, हरि आम्हांसवें सर्व भोगी, "who undergoes everything along with us." The diagnostic he gives is simple: is there a sense of being accompanied in the quiet? If so, you are not as alone as the empty room insists. The love did not vanish into nothing; it opens, slowly, into being held.
In one breath
You are not required to carry this grief alone, and you are not required to grieve it on schedule or in any particular shape — only to grieve it honestly, naming the real loss instead of a performed one. The people we love were never the floor beneath us; what holds us does not get handed over to death. So set the weight down where it can actually be held — place the load on God's head, and just rest — and let the terrible quiet, in time, become not abandonment but a solitude that is accompanied.