Member-only story
On February 19th, 2019, my grandmother was given less than a year to live.
My grandmother was the only person in my family who never cried with this news. She told us all that she was ready for death, that she had lived a full life she was proud of, and that she was not scared of what came next. If you knew Carol, you know this is the truth.
My grandmother has always been my most favorite family member. She is the person who always pushed me to experiment in life, from a new look to learning to cook. She is the person who taught me to like ‘spooning’ as she called it [snuggling, for the rest of us]. She is the person who always played my imaginary childhood games with me. She is the person who knew exactly how I like my cinnamon toast, and she is the only person in my blood family who reacted appropriately when I realized I liked other girls.
Realizing I was going to lose the most important person in my family before I lost them — at first I was miserable. I spent each day dreading the inevitable, and I was swarmed with it. I felt a tremendous sense of loss, and pain. A lot of anger. It came in waves of tremendous sad and quiet numbness.
In one of the waves, I called a friend to whine.
He reminded me that even the dissolving of a bond is a memory worth having. I could take this time to review and…
