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Silence can be inherited.
Sometimes it’s handed down gently, through what’s left unsaid. Other times, it’s reinforced through discomfort, avoidance, or outright denial.
In many cultures, especially in the West, silence around death is the default. We’re taught not to talk about it, not to think about it, and definitely not to plan for it.
But not in my family. Not with my mom.
A few months before my mother died, my cat fell from a twelfth-story balcony. Someone found him and brought him to a clinic, but he was already gone. I went anyway—to say goodbye and to ask for forgiveness. On the way, I called my mom. I was crying, completely unraveled. This was before I had tools for grief, before I understood how deep it could go.
She let me cry, then gently said, “Okay, Monica. Stop now. Pray for his soul, and don’t try to change what was written.”
Looking back, I see it clearly. She was passing me a lens—a way of seeing death that was rooted in culture, in spirit, and in quiet strength. It stopped me in the moment, but it also forged something deeper. A way of meeting loss that would steady me through every greater grief that followed.
Three months later, my mom died—suddenly and without warning. I was shattered. But I wasn’t lost.
Because of the way my mom had raised me, I had something to stand on. She had prepared me—not just logistically, but spiritually and emotionally. She gave me a way to speak about death that didn’t make it feel like a threat. My Indian heritage gave me that, too. It didn’t dull the pain, but it gave me a place to land.
In her culture, death was part of life. It was something to prepare for. To expect. To speak about clearly. Throughout my childhood, she would often say, “When I die…” followed by something I needed to know. I’d roll my eyes and say, “Mom, I know you’re going to die, but do you have to bring it up so much?” And she’d answer, “Yes, beta. Otherwise how will you know what to do?”
It didn’t come from fear. It came from love. And it worked.
When the time came, I wasn’t paralyzed. I stepped into the role of executor. I managed her legal affairs, her properties, her finances. I became responsible for my brother. It was a lot. But I wasn’t starting from zero.
My mom had included me in her world long before she left it. I knew what accounts she had, what bills needed to be paid, where her will was. I wasn’t stumbling through a maze of paperwork and unanswered questions. I was heartbroken, but not disoriented.
When friends saw what I was navigating, they were stunned. “How are you able to handle all this?” they asked. I told them: “Because my mom prepared me.”
And almost every time, I heard the same reply: “Oh, my parents’ finances are none of my business.”
And I thought: Oh no? Well… good luck when they die.
This is what happens when we don’t talk about death. We don’t just avoid hard conversations—we avoid the structure that helps us survive the hardest moments of our lives.
Culture doesn’t just shape how we prepare for death. It shapes how we experience life. And our lens on life—what we expect from it, how we relate to hardship—inevitably colors our grief.
In many Western environments, especially those shaped by privilege, there’s an underlying belief that life is supposed to be mostly smooth. That if something devastating happens, it’s a break in the norm. In my Canadian circles, I often heard, “It’s not fair.”
But when my partner’s mother died of COVID—a woman deeply loved by hundreds—not one person in his Mexican family said it was unfair. It was heartbreaking. But not unfair.
That didn’t mean they grieved any less. It meant they had been taught that loss is part of life. My mother never taught me to expect ease. She taught me to expect reality—sometimes beautiful, sometimes brutal, always complex.
She would say, “The easy road always gets harder, and the hard road always gets easier.” And, “The time is going to pass whether you do it or you don’t.” Her message was always: don’t wait. Don’t avoid what is hard. Face it, deal with it, and move forward.
That message stayed with me. So when loss came, I didn’t resist it. I didn’t see it as a mistake. I saw it for what it was—and I let it move through me. I started looking for ways to carry it. Some tools came from culture. Some from faith. Some I discovered through sheer necessity. But I didn’t wait for the pain to disappear before I started building a life around it.
This is what we mean by choosing our lens.
We all inherit stories about grief, about what life should look like, about what’s normal. Often, we don’t even realize they’re stories—we think they’re truth.
As a child, I began noticing the difference between what I was taught at home and what I saw around me. I didn’t have the words at the time, but I was already sorting. Picking up pieces of one way, setting others down. I was building my own internal framework.
And when loss came, that framework held me.
We don’t have to wait for a crisis to start noticing. We can pay attention now. How do the people around us talk about aging, illness, death? What do they avoid? What do they believe about grief—how long it should last, how it should look?
These observations aren’t about blame. They’re about clarity. And clarity gives us the power to choose.
We can ask ourselves: Do these beliefs support us? If not, what else might be true?
We get to decide what kind of relationship we want with grief. We can shape our own view of death. We can gather the truths that steady us, and let go of the ones that leave us feeling unworthy, ashamed, or broken.
This isn’t about rejecting our roots. It’s about choosing what helps us live.
Choosing differently doesn’t make grief painless. But it might make it feel less like a personal failure. It might make it feel like what it is: an inevitable part of love.
This is purposeful grief. Not just surviving. Not just “getting through.” But letting it open something. Letting it soften and strengthen us at the same time.
For me, receiving that lens from my mom—and choosing to refine it over time—allowed me to reach that place.
A grief that didn’t just flatten me. A grief I could live with. A grief I could grow from.
Because when we carry grief with intention, it doesn’t just mark us—it shapes us. It deepens us. And over time, it can become something more than sorrow.
It can become strength. Meaning. Even a quiet kind of power.
~
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