Dear Grandma

This was a letter I wrote last week after learning of my grandmother's death on May 7th, and was read out-loud by my aunt at her funeral yesterday.

Dear Grandma,

We’re not so different, you and I. Some people say that characteristics skip a generation. Is that what happened with us? Because we’re both super sassy, you and I. Did you know that when I was a little girl and being a smart mouth, my parents would tell me, “you’re being like your grandma”? Maybe it was their way of telling me that I was being too honest; I was saying out loud what I thought. Whether or not it was true was beside the point. I was saying it without thinking first about the way that it might hurt someone else. I’m still like that, sassy and straightforward with my emotions and my thoughts. It gets me into trouble sometimes. Okay, much of the time. But sometimes it’s a good thing. It helps people to know what I’m thinking and what I need. It helps me to be honest.

It’s only now that I know such talk was your way of showing that you cared. It was your way of showing love. It was also your way of showing your insecurity, your vulnerability, and your anxiety. I know that you always only wanted the best for Ruth and me. You wanted us to be in a safe environment growing up. You wanted us to be healthy. You were also insecure about yourself, your own body, and your own life, and perhaps you projected this shame onto my family and me. Is this why you would leave without saying good-bye? I know that you loved me, and you wanted to be close with me, and you wanted to protect me. It is only now that I realize you were feeling intense pain yourself, and you wanted to show your love for me, perhaps protect me somehow from feeling the same shame you felt.

There is something else that we share in common. Perhaps a propensity to isolate ourselves, move to far-away lands that are not easily accessible to family and friends. Me? China. You? Rural Michigan. Perhaps we did this because we have a vision for ourselves and our health and happiness. For you, it was easy access to hiking, biking, and swimming that you chose to make a priority. For me, it’s easy access to learning foreign languages and working with different cultures. But perhaps in doing so we ended up isolating ourselves and our relationships. Perhaps we built walls without even realizing it. Perhaps when we built those walls, others don’t have the energy to knock on them, and they just give up. And so, we too give up, and then 20 years pass and you’re gone and the opportunities I had to visit you are gone. I’ll never have another opportunity to go swimming with you, or eat ice cream on the beach, or watch fireworks on the harbor, or ride my decorated bike in the parade with Sam, or read on your living room couch, or go swimming at the club house, or take walks in the woods with you. Those things will never be able to happen again. I didn’t take the opportunity to do those things with you when the chance presented itself, and I can never get that lost time back.

But maybe there is still some hope here, maybe I can go back to Presque Isle and visit your grave and go biking in the streets and swimming in the lake. Maybe I can bring my kids here on summer vacation and we’ll watch the fireworks and the parade on Fourth of July and we’ll think of you and I’ll tell them stories of your tenaciousness and your spunk and your sass and your honesty. And I’ll tell them that you left me with perhaps the most important lesson of all: don’t give up on your relationships because they don’t reach out, or they’re far away, or they’ve put up walls that you don’t understand. Talk to them, tell them what you want the relationship to be like, ask them, “why are you putting up walls?” I know it’s not your fault that we didn’t spend a lot of time together when I was younger, just as it’s not my fault either. Maybe you were too scared, maybe you were not able to be vulnerable with us the way we needed you to be. But that was the only way you knew how to show us that you cared. Perhaps in this way you have given me a gift, shown me how much we need each other, and how our relationships are worth saving and worth talking about no matter how much hostility there was in the beginning. Because at the end of the day all we have are our relationships.

You and I didn’t always understand each other. But maybe that’s because we are so similar that we couldn’t see that we were staring at each other in the mirror, our defense mechanisms and our anxieties clouding our relationships and making it hard for people to feel close to us. Regardless, I know you love me and I hope you know that I love you too, always and forever. I will come back here with my own children to show them the place that you loved so much. I’ll think of you, and I’ll remember why you loved it here so much and I’ll remember that life is short, something to be treasured.

Over Thanksgiving last year, you said to me between laborious breaths over the phone, “I doubt I will ever see you again.” I knew then that I had to come back to Michigan to see you, and I did. Me with my concussion, you with your weak heart. A weak heart that was actually not weak at all but stronger than any of us could have ever imagined, pounding through your chest and keeping you breathing throughout the winter, the blood pulsing through your veins as you gasped for oxygen. We laid next to each other in bed, sleeping and holding hands, you scowling at me when I accidentally touched your back with cold hands. We slept and listened to the radio and laughed and cried together.

Again, we are not so different, you and I. You had panic attacks in the same way I did, hyperventilating and confused, scared but not sure about what. “I am NOT scared to die,” you insisted over and over again. We talked about it, and you begged and pleaded with me: “I want to die, I want to die,” you told me over and over again. “I know, I know,” was all I could say while holding your hand. “It’s going to be okay,” was all I could say between my tears. I knew how you felt. I had felt it only a few weeks before, after sick with a concussion I had fearful images of me dying and what my funeral would look like, images that would leave me in the throes of panic attacks.

My concussion was painful, but I don’t regret a single minute, a single move that I made. That concussion brought me back to you, brought me back to Michigan so we could celebrate Christmas and New Year’s together. That concussion brought us closer than we ever had been, allowed us to spend more time together in one stretch than I can ever remember. And what a gift that was. What an honor that was to spend that time with you. Thank you for letting me take care of you. You were vulnerable with me, letting me do and see things that were embarrassing, letting me into that part of your life, into that private space that I had never before seen before. Letting me see that vulnerable side of you, for before you had always put up a shield for me. It was a shield made of love, a shield made out of protection for me and my safety and health, but it was a shield nonetheless. This winter, both of us sick and lying in bed, we were finally able to be vulnerable together. And perhaps for the first time in our lives we were able to sit in peace together.

I had a dream about you recently. I was taking care of you in your hospital bed and you kept thrashing around uncontrollably. I was trying to hold you down, but I couldn’t and you almost knocked over the computer that was next to your bed. There was a bottle of cat shampoo that I just had to pour into a plastic bag, but it kept spilling all over the floor and all over me. While I was distracted, you escaped. You rode off in your nightgown on a boat, sailing off into the lake’s horizon. Later, the lake froze over and you came walking back to me on the ice and we embraced.

Grandma, I know you’ll always be there for me, even if it is only through memories and stories. I’m glad you were finally able to escape the misery you were in and I hope you’re out there, riding on boats and skiing and swimming and hiking with Sam and Hope like you love to do.