“It’s that time of year,
Leave all our hopelessnesses aside,
If just for a little while;
Tears stop right here.”
~ Imogen Heap
My grandma passed away this morning in her sleep, just a few months shy of her 90th birthday. I nodded and mm hmmed matter-of-factly during the phone call like I had been expecting it, but in reality, I just didn’t know how else to react. I feel oddly disconnected here, as if grief politely stays on its own continent.
My memories of her flit in and out like animated Polaroids, grainy and mauve-tinted. We weren’t particularly close for many years—Granddad was the one with the root beer floats and sense of adventure while Grandma hovered nearby with a feather duster —but I knew she loved me. Beyond loving me, she approved of me in her gentle, pale pink way. My soul could flow free-form around her, a rare and deeply precious gift to my girlhood.
She gave me the best Christmas gift a ten-year-old girl could fathom: three colors of pastel eye shadow, a dark teal eyeliner, and the first glimmer of hope that my heart was worthy of a little glamor. She let me raid her closet and dress up as the socialite in my daydreams. She let me grow up at my own pace and didn’t question when I poured myself a coffee at age 15; she simply poured herself a matching mug and sat down with me to chat. She trusted me with family taboos and hurts, she asked me when she needed help, and she always cared. She cried the last time she hugged me goodbye.
Her soul was a bird, I think—fragile-boned and forever swooping between the vast weight of our atmosphere and heaven. As delicate as my grandma was, all vintage crystal and mist inside her skin, life couldn’t break her. Not that it didn’t try, but hardships were no match for that determined, devoted heart. In a childhood journal, I once wrote that I would be devastated if she died. Then, it was true. But now… I just want to cheer her on; gravity has lost its grip on my precious grandma, and she can finally soar.
beautiful…..
I’m sorry. It sounds like she was a great gift to your childhood.
This is beautifully written tribute to your gran, Bethany. So many vivid metaphors and images. And I love the photo of your Grandmother behind the drum kit.
My Grandmother got a tattoo a few years before she passed, at 85. As much as our Grandmothers appear to us as “all vintage, crystal and mist inside her skin” — they held within themselves this youthful, young, wild woman as well, who we may have never quite known. Yet I feel like even the snippet of them we caught on to sewed a deep stich into our hearts, yes?
Thank you for this lovely rememberance.
You have written so beautifully how your grandmother touched your heart. I am sorry for your loss.
What a lovely eulogy, Bethany.
What a loving eulogy you’ve written here, sweet Bethany. I have to love any grandma behind a drum set, that’s for sure. The fact that you felt she understood you, what a gift. What Rachelle said is so true – and I feel it, as I get a wee bit older, and still very much like ME and not whatever number I am – that she was a flesh-and-blood woman, connecting with you and your essential self.
Also, I’m totally obsessed with Imogen Heap these days, and so I love the song.
Thank you all for your kind thoughts. I really like what you said, Rachelle, about even our grandmothers still having youth and wildness inside; it helps to think about her as a whole person even when her body finally reached its expiration date.