BIG FEELS ON MY GRANDMA AS A SPARK:
Last night I dreamt about my grandma. When I woke up I remembered two things:
She looked healthy and modern and still her age and so beautiful.
She held the whole world in her eyes, in her voice, in the things that she said.
This is not so different from how she was. She was always beautiful. In the dream, it was as if her style had adapted with the years, which it would have. She is the woman who both modelled her wedding dress off of Queen Elizabeth II’s, and the one who was the first in her community to wear one of those bubble tops that became all the rage in her age group a short six weeks later.
What was different in this dream was the grounded, felt sense that she was finally feeling it all.
When she was alive, it was as if she was afraid to feel life’s more treacherous emotions. That she feared falling off the deep end, to never come back.
There are a collection of photos from the day of and surrounding the death of my brother, Colson. I’ve been fascinated by these photos for years. My first thought has always been, “Who decided to take photos on these horrible days?” “Who let them do it?” “Why would someone ever think that was a good idea?”
But there they are, documentary-style snapshots of my family in the first throes of grief, all the same. My brother on his deathbed. My family and I surrounding him. My mother on a payphone, puffy-eyed, exhausted, calling to give the impossible news to those who were waiting with held breath on the other end.
My grandma is in these photos. She looks unsteady. Removed. Uncomfortable. Afraid to fall off the edge.
It’s not that my grandma was not well acquainted with the deep end. Her parents died too young. She would mention them on occasion, with so much love and a colour of grief in her voice that even she couldn’t extinguish. In later years, she would support my grandpa through his great depression. He slipped so far into the deep end, it only makes sense that she would cling to the edge of lightness even more.
Grandma was reliably light; sparkly, even. She was known as the fun one. People liked to joke about her laugh, which ebbed and flowed from a waterfall splash of a giggle to a loud, bawdy guffaw. They joked, a small admission of their discomfort with a loud woman, but her laugh was the sound that initiated every party; the sound of a good time waiting to be had. It marked the moment everyone could relax and be themselves.
My grandma used to tell the story of visiting her new husband’s family home for the first time. Silence was more of a habit than a rule at the table; a byproduct of kids being instructed to be seen, not heard. My great grandpa thought being a man meant presenting himself as a block of stone. My grandma came for one meal and changed everything. She laughed and teased and let herself be both the head and the tail of the joke – a generous act. It was the great thawing of the family. One spark. My grandma.
By the time I met my great grandpa, two generations later, he was a different man: soft and gentle and fun. He loved my grandma, his daughter-in-law, with his whole heart for his whole life.
I love my grandma in every way she has been and every way she still is. She visits me when I need her, comforting me in her teasing, always-a-little-silly way.
This week, my phone flashed 11:11 at me four different times in 48 hours.
11:11 AM
11:11 PM
11:11 AM
11:11 PM
Then I found two dimes in unusual places.
I am at least a little stitious, so I googled what this meant. Apparently, these signs mean the same thing. Pay attention. Be encouraged. Trust your intuition. You are on the right path. It is meant as encouragement from those who have passed on.
Last night when my grandma visited me, it was the first time I saw her fully grounded in every emotion. She could hold the grief, the anger, the bewilderment, all alongside her unmitigated hope, candour, and contagious spark.
I had an interview for an award I won this week and the interviewer wanted to know my origin story. I don’t know how to tell this story anymore. I used to, but things got muddled — pain and joy commingled — and now there is no clear through-line, not yet. The interviewer was confused. Is this a good story? Is it bad?
Yes.
“You don’t sound bitter,” he said.
I’m not. Or at least, not entirely. When you hold the universe inside you, there is enough room for it all, anyways. There is no fear of falling off the edge of the cliff. The grief holds you as much as the joy.
I’m learning this. Slowly, slowly, and in some ways, now, all at once.
My grandma visited me last night to say:
I know what you hold inside of you. No part negates the other. Be loud about it all. The things that contradict each other make you human and rooted. I love you I love you I love you I love you.
Talk soon,
Natahna
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The Recommends: Watching this lip sync (and really any lip sync) by Jorgeous from RPDR Season 14.
Ah wow! Your grandma sounds like such a brilliant, sparkly gem. I’m so glad you’re still connecting with her in dreamland and in your writing 💕