Eighty Eight

Celebrating with tears in my eyes.

Today is my grandmother's 88th birthday and the first one that I've spent in a world without her. She lives still, even now, in the memories I have of her, in the words I speak about her, in the texts sent back and forth between my aunts, my dad, and me, and in the days earmarked to commemorate her life. Today is one of those days. 

I didn't write last week because the grief came. I didn't expect it to. My grandmother passed away over three months ago. I made it through that couple of weeks, where many other difficult things happened, relatively okay. I handled everything that life threw at me, I did what I needed to do, and I cried many, many times, but I survived what at one time was unthinkable to me: getting through the death of my beloved grandmother. She was my last surviving grandparent for most of my life. 

The grief hit me after I finally slowed down last week. I had been traveling first to North Carolina for a music festival and a visit to my grandma's house, after which I was supposed to go to Austin. I didn't get to because my husband Tucker got COVID, and I canceled my trip to meet him in Texas. He flew home a few days later, and we quarantined until I left to see my mom in Florida. After visiting with Mom, I had work to do in Orlando; then, I went to Epcot with some friends. Unintentionally, I had found myself on a three-and-a-half-week roller coaster ride, and when I got off of it, and my feet hit the ground, my body and brain reminded me how tough this year has been so far. 

I came home and crashed out. Every couple of hours, I would be reminded by something or other that my grandma was gone, and I couldn't call her. 

I would say it out loud to Tucker, and the words didn't feel real. They still don't. It feels unbelievable to me that I am writing to you about the loss of my grandmother because I never thought I would have to live in a world without her, not really. 

No matter how often we talked about her passing with one another, something she and I did nearly every time we were face to face, I was unprepared. 

I am still not prepared to walk through life without her in it. 

I think about her every day. I look at pictures of her. I smell the things I now own of hers, hoping they still smell like her house (cedar, a lotion that I can't remember the name of, and the tiniest bit of cigarette smoke– it's divine). 

They say grief comes in waves, and if you've experienced immense grief, you know how true it is; it's not just some platitude. 

I listened to some old voicemails from her, and I had to sit with some of the worst parts of grief. That's when the waves almost knocked me down. I had to reckon with the fact that 34-year-old me was once 27-year-old me, a granddaughter who didn't call as much as she should.

I had no regrets before listening to those voicemails on the drive home from the grocery store. Now I have one: I wish I would have called more in my twenties. 

I sit with the grief of that. Of the thousands more minutes I could have spent on the phone with her. I text my aunts and tell them how regretful I am. I sob. I let it rush over me and try its best to knock me down. 

My aunts and I are all in agreement that no matter what, losing her would leave us exactly where we are now: wishing for more time that we could have had if we would've just picked up the phone more, or stopped by more. Everyone wishes for more time. Everyone has regrets when they lose someone they love. That universal nature of it doesn't negate the regret we feel; we all still wish we had done more. We all could have done more. 

There's no tidy little bow here. I don't know how to end a piece about a grief that is still very much ongoing. Instead, I'll tell you what I'm doing today. 

I texted my aunts and dad this morning to wish them a Happy Grandma's Birthday. I told them I knew it would be sad, but I hoped they found some happiness in it too– it is the day that she was born, yes, but it's also the day that our family was born when you think about it. 

As I type this I’m wearing a shirt that my father and I gave her for Mother's Day. My best guess is that it's from 1995. It's a white t-shirt that has a screen printed photo of he and I on it, and it says "We love you" in multi-colored bubble letters. It looked brand new when I found it in her house about a month ago, but there's a small, pin-sized stain on it that lets me know she wore it at least once. It smells exactly like her house. 

When people ask about the shirt, I will tell them she would have been 88 years old. I will talk about her, and my voice will not crack when I say that she meant more to me than most people ever will, and she passed three months and almost two weeks ago. I will tell them that this shirt was hers because I gave it to her when I was still a kid. I will show them the stain that proves it was once on her body the same way it's on mine now. And if I cry by the time I get to that part, so be it. I am grasping at ways to feel close to her.

I will hold her with me today, all day. I will stare the grief right in the eyes, and I won't look away because the grief is what I have to remind me of her today. I am okay with the fact that it hurts because losing a woman who helped raise you is hard to get through. 

I thought I'd be ready to make her fudge recipe that punctuated my childhood, but I don't think I can do it today. Instead, I might get a Krispy Kreme donut, one of the only desserts I can remember her liking, and I will microwave it for 7 seconds, just like she showed me how to do. 

I will cry, probably a lot. I can't not cry. I can't believe I won't be calling her to wish her a happy birthday this year. I can't believe that the numbers attached to hearing her voice on any whim I had to call no longer belong to her. So I will cry about that. But I will also find ways to find some enjoyment. I will read, wrap myself in her quilts, and then, if it feels good, I will get my sewing machine down from the top of my closet and make some pillows out of some of her fabric just like she taught me. 

---

Thank you for reading. It means the world to me that you’d continue to extend the invite into your proverbial living room. The newsletter is my favorite place on the internet and I am consistently thrilled to learn that it means something to other people. If you want to support what I’m doing, here’s a little list of ways you can help out:

• Give this post a like and leave a comment! Engagement helps Substack push this newsletter out to other people who might love it.

• Send me a message and just say hi :)

• Forward this email to a few friends who would enjoy it.

• Follow me on Instagram!

• Become a paid subscriber! You can upgrade here 👇