"The Management of Grief" - Bharati Mukherjee

This is Cathy Lee.

In the course of this story, the protagonist struggles to come to terms with the loss of her sons and her husband. Her transition from grief to acceptance to eventual tentative optimism is clearly portrayed. When she thinks of dropping her sons’ prized belongings into the ocean, she thinks that “they’d want them on their island” (p. 422), referring to Dr. Ranganathan’s earlier words indicating the possibility of her sons’ survival. Her words imply pessimism about their survival, as putting material possessions in the ocean would most likely mean losing them; she is outwardly acknowledging Dr. Ranganathan’s façade of optimism, but not actually believing him. However, she still harbours some form of hope for their continued survival, as exemplified in the fact that she packed “dry clothes for [her] boys” in her suitcase (p. 424). When she converses with the Sikh couple in Agincourt, however, she understands that her dead family members “are not coming back” (p. 427), showing that she has accepted her loss. She also later engages in support of a charity (p. 429), as though the nurturing or support of something will mitigate the loss and grief she is dealing with.

Towards the end of the story, she “[waits]”, “[listens]”, and “[prays]” (p. 430) for her family, but is no longer preoccupied with their deaths, as implied by her realisation that they are absent in her dreams; her praying at this point seems like an action that she simply performs as part of her duty as a wife and mother. She then hears “the voices of [her] family one last time”, urging her to take her life into her own hands. While this might show that her actions are still tied to her dead family, as what she does hinges on whether she has accepted her loss (even her epiphany comes in the form of words from her family), the fact that she hears their voices in her head “one last time” indicates that the story is ending on an optimistic note, signalling the independence and self-exploration in her future. This is further underscored by the physical distance from the rest of her family, the fact that she severed ties with ignorant Judith Templeton, and that she sold any physical assets related to her family (such as “the pink house” (p. 429) ).