What My Grandmother Says

Conversations at the heart of our grief

Since my grandfather’s death a month ago, I have spent more one-on-one time with my grandmother than I have in my entire life. I’ve gone back to Denver twice and slept 10 nights at her house, waking early in the morning to her already up; talking with her into the night until we both finally look at the clock and say, Good grief, is it already that late? I’ve warmed up her little neck pillow: two minutes in the microwave, draped it across her shoulders. Rubbed lotion on her back and dug my fingers into her muscle knots. Unloaded and loaded the dishwasher.

My grandparents always were a pair — it was hard to find one without the other. They were married for 66 years; together for 68. The house where my grandmother and I slept those nights this past month is one she built and moved into with my grandfather when she was 34 years old. Last December, she turned 90 in it. Until now, she has never lived alone.

We’ve been sitting, just the two of us, with our grief. Hers is different than mine, and bigger, but I think she welcomes my presence at least. We’re processing together through storytelling: I ask a question; she tells a tale. I fancy myself an ancestral reporter, noting down stories and details from her. I did this with my Boppa, too: I could listen to either of them talk for hours, often playing off each other, often filling in the details that the other forgot.

Now, it’s just her: backlit in her La-Z-Boy, a solo survivor among so many of her friends and family. The details are all still right there, at the top of her mind. What year was that, again? I ask, and she tells me. A series of serious faces look out from her high school graduation photo. She can name any of them. Proud as ever, she considers herself at 18: the only girl from her class to get to go to college.

Photo of my grandmother in her high school yearbook

A lot of her stories are familiar: The time my grandfather made a bad deal and they almost lost their house, then were recipients of what they perceived to be a miracle; the way they came upon the plot of land for the house in the first place — at random, seemingly, and awarded it despite a competing cash offer literally 100 times theirs. My grandma tells me that my Boppa always said I’d rather be lucky than good, which I can’t remember ever hearing him say, but which sounds just like him. I never knew two luckier people.

Many stories, however, are new to me: She tells me about trying to start a girls’ basketball team at her high school and the pushback against it, the way it never came to be; about her mother’s loveliness — a city girl who married late and became lonely out on that wheat farm. She tells me about a party she attended in 1959 — volleyball themed — and how she showed up in kneepads only to realize that the girls weren’t allowed to play, that the rest of them were wearing tight skirts and nylons.

She never could become comfortable, she says, the rest of the night, though I sense that she’s talking about more than just the party. She always chafed against the space between her spirit and the way women were expected to be. Too big, too tall, too brash, she says — a potential date once asked if she was a linebacker and even now, I can see her cheeks flush. She talked back to her sisters’ husbands. She says they never liked it.

I try to imagine what it must be like, to be born in 1934 on a farm in Washington and to have seen the world change as it has. Not change as it has. My grandmother remembers going to the movies in town as a child and the news playing before the feature film; how slides clicked through images of concentration camps. It chilled her to the bones, she says. I show her an Instagram post of those masked men in El Salvador, seated and leaned against one another. She shakes her head and closes her eyes.

I thought I might leave this world better than I found it, she says, and in the small ways, of course she has. In the big ones, though, she’s watching with the rest of us as everything unravels. I tell her about a conference I was supposed to go to for women in business — how it was canceled because the funders pulled out. Why? she asks, then, What does DEI stand for? When I tell her, she is beside herself. Diversity, equity, and inclusion! she says again and again in disbelief. I would think those are the best words we have.

When I was younger, I was inspired by everything she said: she’s always been ahead of her time; had her own career as a physical therapist and can tell you anything about a spinal cord injury if you ask. I loved that I got to interpret my own gender, my own sense of freedom through this lens of hers: that I stood on her shoulders — she, my firm foundation. Misogyny was mostly a vague concept that had happened to her so that I could be safe from it. I used to figure that the world that worked to keep her small would always let me be big.

Of course this was never true, though I’ve slipped through much of my life relatively unscathed. Privilege can do that for you. Now, we’re watching together as the tidal wave rises, worried about people who we love, and ourselves. I can tell that she wants to make me feel better about the state of our world, but she can’t anymore. She doesn’t know what she can say.

I tell her it’s okay. She doesn’t need to fix anything for me or tell me a story that makes me feel grateful for the way I was always allowed to play volleyball at the party. Time shifts and our dynamic with it: I’m not a kid anymore; it’s not her job to take care of me. The death of my grandfather cements this: I’m playing a new role, telling my own stories, doing the chores, stopping by the grocery store for more essentials.

The two of them for so long were self-sufficient — a well-oiled machine. It’s the first time in my life I’ve felt that she needs me, in the way I have so often needed her.

And so it’s my turn to make her feel better. I tell her about the protest I went to between visits to Denver — show her the signs. People are trying, I say, and she nods. We have another conversation about Palestine. It’s good to talk about it, she says, and I wonder how often she gets to say what she really means. I tell her how much I love to live alone — how free I feel, how my time is all mine. I ask if she’s worried about being lonely and she’s quiet, then says: You know, I’ve been lonely already for a while now.

I try to stay present like I’ve been told to. Lean into my own loneliness but not my despair. I tell her to do the same and she agrees. We are so mired in our personal grief and also in this collective one: our favorite man has died, and our country threatens to follow suit.

I can’t help but wonder about myself at her age, and her at mine. She was once on the edge of turning 29 and probably thought she would never be old, as I now absurdly think. She tells me about how we understand that other people will die but feel insane when applying that idea to our own selves. Surely not me, though, we think. It’s funny, how we’re all the same. How we all hold ourselves as the singular exception.

One day, if I’m lucky, I’ll be 90 — and whether I have a granddaughter or not, I will certainly have a lot of stories. I’ll have someone I want to tell them to, in those lonely weeks after someone beloved has died, and my bones become heavy with the lead of grief. What will I want to say I was doing at this time in my life? In my country’s life? Will I get to report steadfastness as my grandmother always has — all the ways one can push back, expand? I want to be able to do that.

This is a helpful compass. To want at the end of my life so many stories of joy and forgiveness, empathy and teeth bared when it was necessary to bare teeth. I am proud to be my grandmother’s granddaughter. I want to be the kind of woman who a granddaughter might admire.

So the baton is passed. So my grandmother is tired now and needs someone to massage her shoulders. I warm my hands and she takes off her shirt and I am moved by the intimacy of this — her bare back, her weathered skin. I love to be in this realm of women. I love to care for my elder who has always cared so deeply for me. Who has had the capacity for so much nuance and deep conversation. Who demonstrates so many ways of loving.

My grandmother tells me in her stories how to be. Whole. Alone. Proud. Rebellious. So I’m trying to go out and be.