Word: Next

Word inspiration: Brand Next’s social media ads. The fashion and lifestyle brand has been following me across platforms for weeks now. Hovering. Lingering. Quietly reassuring me that if not today, maybe tomorrow. That there is always another chance to click, return, reconsider.

The story I have with it:

The word “next” may sound hopeful to many. Why not? The word itself oozes ‘hope’!

Next chance.

Next phase.

Next trip.

Next year.

A quiet promise that life is still moving forward.

And maybe that is why I still keep looking for my next at the face of death! Because death is the one thing that refuses to negotiate with “next.”

My maternal grandmother was one of the calmest people I have ever known. A juvenile diabetes patient for most of her life, she survived things that should have made her bitter. The loss of two children. Paralysis. The death of her husband. Endless hospital visits.

And yet, whenever I think of her, I remember a soft smile.

Never panic.

Never noise.

Just this quiet assurance in her eyes that said, I have your back.

I think most of my emotional strength comes from watching her survive life without theatrics.

By the time I was in my late teens, I was busy becoming myself. Dramatic friendships. Crushes. Arguments with parents. The exhausting urgency of youth.

And through all of it, she listened.

Never judged.

Never gave long lectures.

She simply let me arrive at myself slowly.

For a brief period after a foot surgery, she moved into an apartment close to our house so my mother could look after her recovery.

Everyone else saw it as a practical arrangement.

I saw it as a gift.

Most nights, we ate dinner together. Just the two of us. We watched films. Talked endlessly. Slept side by side like children at a sleepover.

Looking back now, I think life was quietly preparing me.

Because shortly after she returned to her own home, she passed away.

I still feel she knew.

She wanted to leave from her own space. On her own terms. With the same dignity and stubborn independence with which she had lived.

What I struggle with even today is not just losing her.

It is losing all the “next” things.

The next conversation.

The next film together.

The next gift I wanted to buy her once I started earning properly.

The next moment where I could finally tell her that I had become a little like her after all.

But that next moment never came.

And maybe that is why those Next ads unsettle me a little now.

Because algorithms are built on the assumption that there is always a tomorrow waiting for you somewhere.

Real life is not nearly that patient.