I just… I don’t even know what to feel anymore. It's like I’m stuck in this loop, this emotional paralysis where I *should* be feeling something specific, but it’s just… static. Like when you’re waiting for a call that never comes. The thing is, it’s not even *my* loss, not directly. It’s for my dad, right? He’s 68, a farmer, widowed. And honestly, it’s like watching a silent movie in slow motion. He just walks the land, every day. The same patterns. The rhythm is completely off. No morning check-ins for my late mother. That was their thing. He just... exists. And I’m supposed to be the strong one, the one who understands, the one who knows what to say. But I don’t. I don’t understand any of it. And that’s where the frustration comes in. Because everyone back home – my aunts, my cousins, even my grandfather who barely speaks English – they all call *me*. Not my older brother, who actually lives closer. Not my sister, who’s a lot more outwardly empathetic. No, it’s always *me*. "How is Baba ji doing? Is he eating? Is he sleeping? You must make sure he doesn't feel alone." And I’m like, what do you want me to *do*? Force-feed him? Set up a damn surveillance system? I'm 31, okay? I have my own life here. My own career that I’m trying to build, my own… expectations. From my parents, from *my* community here, from the one I left behind. This double-bind situation is just… it’s exhausting. It’s a constant cognitive load, trying to interpret grief through two entirely different cultural lenses. And then I see him out there, just walking, sometimes he just stops and stares at the fields for twenty minutes straight. And I look at him, this man who raised me, who taught me how to drive the tractor when I was too young, who never showed a single shred of outward emotion my entire life, and now he’s just… empty. And I just feel this… rage? Resentment? Not at *him*, not really. More like, at the unfairness of it all. At the sheer helplessness. At the fact that I’m supposed to feel profound sorrow for a woman who was honestly incredibly difficult, incredibly demanding, and who spent most of my adult life telling me I wasn't good enough. And now I’m supposed to grieve her absence for *him*? For my dad? And for the sake of the family image? I just want to scream. I want to tell everyone to just… leave me alone. Let me figure out what this means, what *I* mean in all of this. Because right now, I’m just a conduit for everyone else’s feelings, and I’m about to short circuit.