Losing your grandparent is underrated
On the eve of my Grandma’s one-year departure from the reality I currently reside in, I wanted to share with you all where I’m at. Losing my grandma split me like a banana, her absence ripped open an abyss I can’t quite seem to fill, I’ve tried to overflow it with piping hot cups of tea, but tea doesn’t taste the same anymore.
I think losing your grandparent can be devastating, I think we don’t speak about it enough. I think you might need this, I know I do.
Like a lot of you, I was lucky enough to have four grandparents in my life, also, like a lot of you, not all of them meant the same thing to me, each having had varying impacts on my life. Grandma was different, she was a fully-fledged dreamboat in my ocean, she had her own key to my heart, a bespoke map around my brain, she knew how to wrap me up, hold me close and make me feel whole again, she’d been doing so since day dot. I never felt like a chore to her, I never felt like a strain on her schedule, whenever I was with her, it was as if her clock revolved around my mind, it was as if she lived for my cousins, siblings and me, it was as if we were all she had, and in her mind, that was more than enough.
Often, my grandma spoke proudly of always wanting to be a grandmother, she had met various women throughout her life who had instilled in her the life purpose of being a good grandparent. It was her final chapter, it was her best chapter yet. Being a grandparent, to my grandma, was a full-time job, she would drop anything on a whim, she dedicated her remaining days revolving around our atmospheres, nothing was ever too hard or too much. Everything was always in reach.
Grandparents teach children about the ‘old’, the past, about times when the TV couldn’t pump Drake’s Hotline Bling on repeat, grandparents are a direct connection for children to their history. I feel like grandparents normalise the past, wrinkly skin, slow consumption, patience, greeting your mailman and potentially out-dated values from the get-go. In an age where everything is rapid and turbulent, grandparents have a beautiful way of slowing life down in the garden, or during the 2 PM infomercials. Like everything in life, everyone has had a different experience, some of you might not have ever had the opportunity of being a grandchild, maybe that was robbed from you, maybe time played a cruel trick and it was never for you, maybe some of you had grandparents that hurt you, who didn’t understand your innate soul and being in the same room with them made you shake and break. Again, this is just a generalisation. But all of them taught you something, anecdotally or from a parent’s past tale, you learnt something from your grandparents. Maybe it was how to make the perfect piece of toast, you know jam tastes better if its base is covered corner-to-corner in butter, or maybe it was how to sit up properly, posture is a fucking delicacy. Whatever it is, it’s yours, that’s what they’ve given to you and no one can take that away from you.
Which is why losing a grandparent is such an intrinsically tricky period in your life to navigate through. I’ve been mulling over this a lot recently.
I feel like grandparents aren’t a direct necessity in your life, of course, they’re more than a ‘nice to have’ we just don’t know what life would be like without them, we know no better. But the world and your direct day-to-day activities will continue to flow, as usual, without them. I haven’t lost a parent, but I’ve had several friends who have and watching them lose their way and a piece of their soul has been gut-wrenching. Life gets flipped. But losing your grandparent can seem easy enough to sweep over, to quickly erase, maybe your Sunday afternoons are now clear for a new hobby or chore. Your friends won’t check up on you as often, because they too have lost a grandparent or two, it’s almost as if it’s a sad level in life that you have to go through. The loss and pain are normalised because so many people have gone through it at a young age, we tune out the loss of our friends’ grandparents passing because we have been there ourselves and it fucking sucks, but here we are, still kicking, so they should be able to too. “They’ll be fine”, a whisper echoes through your head, because you can sympathise with them, you too know the pain, but you’ve been there and you were offered a minimal amount of time to process, to grieve, to cry -– so why should they be offered anything different. Losing a grandparent is almost part and parcel of life, so I feel like, for me, a lot of people expected me to quickly pick up my misery and move the fuck on.
But fuck that, to hell with anyone who minimises or weakens your feelings, you’re allowed to implode, you’re allowed to collapse, to wallow, to feel anything you’re going to feel. If it’s a trigger, a turning-point, a door to darkness, it is what it is. That’s what life is, as I said, everyone’s experiences are different, so everyone’s grieving is going to be different. In corporate company culture, you’re sent a $50 flower bouquet from the corner-side store, with a cute note saying ‘we’re all so sorry for your loss’ but subtly reminded you’ve taken three days personal grievance leave and the deadline is still Friday, so do your job. It’s toxic. At a past employment occupation my direct boss, at first, disputed whether I could claim my grandma’s death as part of the personal grievance package that we’re legally entitled to. Honestly.
Because so many of us go through the loss of losing a grandparent, we don’t speak about it enough, we don’t accept the meltdowns people attribute to the passing of a grandparent, we’ve built walls with bricks cemented in sadness, we’ve all tried to heal and assimilate the loss and move on. But we’ve done it behind closed doors, we’ve smelt fresh cookies and clinched our eyes to keep the tears in, to keep the memories in, to ensure we’re not considered weak or worse yet, fragile.
We need to flip this, we all need to be a pinch softer, we need to check up on our loved ones after the funeral, after the dust has settled, after the final bite of the chicken club sandwich at the wake. I need to swallow my own words and care a bit more, maybe you do too. Because we really don’t know what anyone goes through during an intense period of loss, we can’t navigate their soul’s ship, we can just be the wind that helps guide it home, a warm shoulder and hot-cooked meal. All you need to do is love, you can’t fill the hole, but you can sow seeds of care around the crevice and be receptive to each other’s feelings.
So, where am I? I have a long way to go. For me, grieving has been inconsistent, I find myself losing my grandma more and more as time goes on. This is what hurts me the most. I don’t feel as close with her anymore, driving to Takapuna, where her retirement home was located, doesn’t make the blood pump through my veins, it doesn’t feel like anything to me, this excitement died with her. I find myself drifting from her and I also find myself blocking her out, as much as I can, as a safety net. I don’t think I deal with loss well, I turn to vices that fill my body up and make me spew rainbows. I don’t know what she feels like anymore, I can’t remember her tight embrace, I am forgetting her, drop by drop, day by day, I have found myself losing our memories. Or am I intentionally trying to push her out, because having her inside me, without her around me, is unbearable to the point of dreadful?
I’m still learning how to let her go, without completely letting her go. I’m filled with regrets about lost time, opportunities and selfish decisions I’ve made that have left memories unmade, but that’s life, isn’t it? I haven’t told anyone this, but sometimes I visit the garden she used to nurture at her retirement home, we always used to garden together. I bring a pump bottle and childishly drench water on her favourite petunias, I think she sees me doing it, every time I feel warmer inside, it’s the little things. My grandma, before she passed, wrote a book of thoughts for her grandchildren, I have the book next to me right now. Trying to type this, it’s raining inside my mind. She noted when I was just two years old, “Liam just loves looking at the moon at night” you see, she understood me before anyone else did, before I had the chance to understand myself. She got me. I do love looking at the moon at night, I’m a big dreamer, I don’t think I was supposed to live earthside for too long, I’m a moon baby, I love looking at the stars now too, because you’re there, grandma.
Words — Liam Sharma
