My grandma and I didn't speak the same language yet our relationship was beautiful

My grandma chided me over the phone, her tone teasing: "Aye oya matta thava cathakaranneh naththe?"

Even as we both laughed, I felt the weight of a familiar shame settle in my body.

It was the first year of the pandemic. Visits to my grandmother's nursing home had been suspended and the isolation was proving extremely hard on her.

My grandma's voice over the phone was eager, brimming with rare stories of her life beyond me. Every now and then she would punctuate a fond recollection by calling me my mother's name.

She had asked why I didn't call her more often.

A series of unfortunate events

We were speaking in Sinhalese, one of the two official languages of Sri Lanka, the country where we were both born.

Or at least, my grandma was speaking Sinhalese.

The only response I could give her was the simple unflattering truth. Yes, it is good if I called Grandma more.

The trouble we had speaking the same language is down to a series of (mostly but not entirely) unfortunate events:

A complicated national history involving compounding tragedies of multiple colonisations and civil war, the difficult and hopeful choices my parents made to leave their home country and migrate our young family to this one, and a sadly mundane decision I made as a child that Sinhalese classes were boring and I no longer wanted to go.

My brown skin that our classroom bully would frequently remind me was the colour of poo (on a good day he would follow up by telling me it was OK because his skin was the colour of wee); the niggling sense that there was something private and uncivilised about eating with our hands; each and every time some kid on the playground told me I was too dark to sit, skip or share secrets with.

In some ways I did succeed in severing this part of myself, though of course at such a young age I had no comprehension of what I was really losing.

Would things have been different if we spoke the same language?

My grandma died only a few months after that phone call.

Despite the continuing pandemic restrictions, I'm grateful to be able to say she was with family.

As she became visibly frailer in the years leading up to her death, I thought of her often, wondering wistfully if our relationship would have been different if we'd been able to communicate more easily.

I know my grandmother had a full and interesting life. She was a strong and capable woman who raised four daughters and helped raise their children.

She left school earlier than was fair, she'd always delighted in wearing beautiful sarees and, after choosing to leave her life in Sri Lanka behind to join her daughters in Australia, was frightened the first time she had to get in an elevator.

My grandma's love was special

All of these things I know from talking with my mother. My memories of time spent with my grandma when I was little are sparse but strong.

On cold days home together she would make me a hot mug of beef-flavoured stock (sometimes indulging my weird childhood desire to lick the raw salty cube like a small carnivorous horse) and herself her favourite supermarket malt.

Somehow she would always smell nice, a scent I can only describe now as soft and warm.

Despite the challenges we faced to communicate, my clearest impression of my relationship with my grandmother is how easy she made it to understand that she loved me.

The last time I visited her in her nursing home, she beckoned me over as always and took my hand in both of hers, telling me without words that she was happy to see me.

Finding solace in language

A lot of people in my position find solace in returning to the language of their family.

I think of my cousin's deeply felt eulogy at my grandmother's funeral (I could follow just well enough to cry the whole way through).

Or of my sister who, despite her rusty Sinhalese, can deliver an appropriately inflected aiyo whenever the moment calls (whether it be a goal against her beloved Giants or my nephew instigating a nappy-related natural disaster).

But something in me stalls, wondering if it would be an impossible attempt to correct the past, trying to rekindle a conversation with my grandma that has already come to an end.

Dinalie Dabarera is the author and illustrator of Quiet Time with My Seeya. She is based in Eora/Sydney.