\u201cI wish you\u2019d walk in again, imagine if you just did.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n My grandmother died on a cold day in March. I remember because I had to bundle up on the long walk across the hospital parking lot. The buzzing bulbs overhead created islands of light in the concrete sea, littered with cars. Inside: a small hospital room, crowded with people, flooded with warm evening light. Every so often, a nurse would come in and rub vaseline on her cracked lips, gaping open towards the sky. \u201cSo her lips don\u2019t dry out,\u201d she said. Does it matter?<\/em> I thought.<\/p>\n I spent the day down there, in Champaign, Illinois, because my father had called me that morning, explaining the situation. A subsequent text from my mother said that this might very well be the last time I would ever see my grandma Bev. At first, I didn\u2019t believe her because Grandma Bev had had health scares like this before. She\u2019d been in and out of the hospital, floating between the plane of the living and the dead for years now. I imagine it was a line she was familiar with. I always had this thought that she\u2019d be the first to go. It\u2019s an awful thought and I never told anybody, but if you think about it, it makes sense.<\/p>\n The sun went to bed early that day. We all went out to eat at a nearby Cracker Barrel and pretended like things were normal for a few hours. I don\u2019t remember eating, just talking and drinking raspberry iced tea. Then, it was back to the hospital room that felt too small to contain the impending grief, with its soft edges and muted colors, as if that could dull the intensity. No, I think that only makes it more profound. When there\u2019s nothing else but white walls and baby blue blankets and beige, vinyl-coated chairs, you feel trapped in the oversaturated, loud colors of pain. The blackest black, an incomprehensible red rage, greens and oranges of conflicting emotions, all swirling together to make a garish landscape I can\u2019t make sense of.<\/p>\n \u201cBut I like to think you hear me, sometimes.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n We all got to have our last words with her. I was last, because I wanted to be left alone. I don\u2019t know why. My mother and my father, even his wife of fifty-plus years, my grandpa, had the courage to allow their last words with my grandma Bev to be public, shared with the rest of the family. But for some reason, I didn\u2019t want anyone to hear. Maybe I felt embarrassed because I didn\u2019t know what I was going to say until I said it.<\/p>\n I firmly believe that people in comas are still aware of what\u2019s going on around them, to a certain extent. I don\u2019t have any scientific or personal knowledge to back this up, but it just seems like that\u2019s how I\u2019d want people to treat me if I was in a state like that. Like I was still a person.<\/p>\n I remember saying a lot of things, but also a whole lot of nothing. Nothing I said would have been able to change what was going on. Was this just for me? Did she care what I was going to say? What would she have said to me, if she could?<\/p>\n And then it hit me: I couldn\u2019t remember the last thing she had said to me. The last time I had seen my grandma Bev was when we came down for our annual Christmas\/New Year\u2019s visit. She was okay, then. At the house, still able to walk around a little bit. I remember things from that day: walking to the nearby lake with Welby, my brother, and my cousin. Throwing rocks and sticks into the ice, rocking the small wooden dock with our weight. But I don\u2019t remember what Grandma Bev\u2019s last words to me were. Not that either of us knew that they would be the last, but still. I\u2019m angry that I can\u2019t remember.<\/p>\n \u201cYou\u00a0still had your nails red.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n I\u2019ve never cried in a hospital. Not when my friend Dallas was in for Crohn\u2019s disease, not when my grandpa got in a car accident, not when I was in fifth grade and had to go in because I had strep throat so bad, my fever climbed to 104. I don\u2019t know why, I just can\u2019t seem to cry in there. It feels wrong.<\/p>\n Maybe it\u2019s because I\u2019ve never been in for anything that bad. And when the people close to me were, I wasn\u2019t there for it. I mean I was, but I was relegated to the sidelines, always sheltered from the truth. But each time I have had to walk into a hospital, I have felt far enough removed from whatever was going on that I had to be the strong one. I was able to hold it together, because my dad shouldn\u2019t have to hold it together when his mother is dying. Dallas\u2019s mother shouldn\u2019t have to hold it together when her son is in the hospital. My grandma Jo shouldn\u2019t have to hold it together when her husband gets in a car accident. So, I was always okay<\/em>. Just okay. Never enough of a mess in the moment to warrant any tears. I knew the emotions and the pain and the grief would come later, but they weren\u2019t big enough that I couldn\u2019t put them on pause the moment I stepped through those automatic, sliding doors.<\/p>\n So, that\u2019s what I do. I hold it together, for my brother, ever the sensitive soul. I hold it together for my dad, for my grandpa, talk about my life and what I\u2019m up to and happy memories. I hold it together for Dallas, who is going through so much more pain than I could ever understand. My pain can come later, and it certainly does.<\/p>\n \u201cAlways trying to keep warm when you\u2019re the sun.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n That night, I left the hospital and Champaign, mostly because I wanted to sleep in my own bed after all that, and I had to work in the morning. In the dark, I drove home, head lights piercing through the evening navy darkness. I listened to Nana<\/em> by The 1975 on repeat, and finally, the tears came. She wasn\u2019t dead yet, but for some reason, I just knew. It wasn\u2019t any sort of spiritual premonition or anything like that. I just knew that was it. There didn\u2019t seem to be any other options. The streams of time had converged, and soon, in the early hours of the morning, my grandma Bev\u2019s river would flow into the sea, emptying a lifetime of memories and experiences into the deep.<\/p>\n I cried once more at the funeral, but mostly because it was so goddamn sad. Touching and simple, it was a gathering of figures familiar and strange all clad in black. Nothing out of the ordinary. It felt safer to cry there, I think, because the sky that evening was so beautiful, a hazy smear of lavender, pink, and orange. Two weeks after her death and it was spring, and the roses were beginning to unfurl. The first daffodils bloomed beneath red-budded trees. The grass in the graveyard was green, and so long it tickled my bare ankles. The country road near the funeral site stretched on forever in either direction.<\/p>\n \u201cI got my pen and thought that I\u2019d write a melody line for you tonight. I think that\u2019s how I make It wasn\u2019t until months later that I truly cried, truly grieved over the passing of my grandma Bev. It was a regular day, filled with regular things and regular problems and regular stressors. I put on some sad music, locked myself in my room, and journaled away my problems, unwilling to leave until I felt better. As Saturn<\/em> by Sleeping At Last played, all the energy sapped from my body and I gave in. Kneeling at the foot of my bed, tissues clutched in hand, I realized I wasn\u2019t crying about the pressures of school or the stupid squabble I had with Welby earlier or even the tumultuous relationship with my parents. I cried for her. Buried beneath all that was the grief, and how deeply sad I was. It colored all the layers above with a dusty blue that I sunk into, leaning into the indescribable experience of loss, an amorphous, looming being that we only touch briefly, for moments in time.<\/p>\n Finally, I felt removed enough from it, and felt safe enough to let the grief move through me like water, a river flowing from my eyes, down my cheeks, and onto the sheets my friend Charlotte had so kindly tie-dyed for our new home. Grieving in those public spaces, so immediately after it happened, didn\u2019t feel right. Didn\u2019t feel like it really solved anything within myself. But that evening as I cried\u2014alone with myself, I was able to see my own grief more clearly. I understood more truly how I felt about my grandma Bev. I was able to sit with the regret that comes in so swiftly with grief, something I was unable to face head-on in the aftermath. It didn\u2019t matter how I felt about Grandma Bev anymore, because she was dead. It was over for her. It didn\u2019t matter, the ways she had hurt me, or my father or my aunt, or anyone really. It was still a life lost, so rich with years and experience and people that I had never known. Her life was an entire world, an entire universe, a criss-crossing of other people and their lives and their worlds, all bumping into each other. A tapestry of sorts, one we weave collectively with others, as we move through our lives like ships passing in the night, creating a fabric that\u2019s never truly completed until we fall into the deep, as it softly embraces each andevery one of us.<\/p>\n \u201cHow rare and beautiful it truly is that we exist.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Olivia Bennett \u201cI wish you\u2019d walk in again, imagine if you just did.\u201d My grandmother died on a cold day in March. I remember because I had to bundle up on the long walk across the hospital parking lot. The buzzing bulbs overhead created islands of light in the concrete sea, littered with cars. Inside: Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":52,"featured_media":0,"parent":25,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"template-full-width.php","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-327","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/euphemism.illinoisstate.edu\/18-2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/327","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/euphemism.illinoisstate.edu\/18-2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/euphemism.illinoisstate.edu\/18-2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/euphemism.illinoisstate.edu\/18-2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/52"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/euphemism.illinoisstate.edu\/18-2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=327"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/euphemism.illinoisstate.edu\/18-2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/327\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":804,"href":"https:\/\/euphemism.illinoisstate.edu\/18-2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/327\/revisions\/804"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/euphemism.illinoisstate.edu\/18-2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/25"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/euphemism.illinoisstate.edu\/18-2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=327"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\n<\/em>things feel alright.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n