I Really, Really Miss My Grandma
Joan Didion once observed in The Year of Magical Thinking, “Grief turns out to be a place none of us know until we reach it.” For the past several years, I have reached it and remained within its bounds intermittently, often without fully recognizing it. What surprises me is not the presence of grief but its persistence: its quiet capacity to infuse ordinary moments and resurface in language, memory, and creative work.
I notice how frequently my writing circles back to my grandmother. She appears in overt references and subtle emotional undercurrents that shape my essays and life. Her absence, paradoxically, remains a constant presence in my intellectual and emotional life. The timing of her death, during the final semester of my graduate coursework, coincided with one of the most demanding periods of my academic career. I was teaching, writing my thesis, working a second job, and attending graduate seminars, operating on a level of cognitive overdrive that left little room for emotional processing. In hindsight, it is clear that I did not grieve so much as defer grief, compartmentalizing it until it inevitably found its way back to me, welcomed or not.
As a child, my grandmother played an instrumental role in cultivating my interest in storytelling, and I attribute most of my success as a professional writer to her. She introduced me to language as play through Mad Libs and creative writing games and enthusiastically supported my first chapter book, an homage to The Magic Treehouse. Her encouragement was unwavering. Long before I considered myself a writer, she did.
Following her death, I inherited her personal journals. Reading them was an unexpected act of recognition. They revealed her vulnerabilities, private disappointments, and a nuanced portrait of a woman negotiating her identity beyond familial roles. Her reflections contained anxieties about aging, motherhood, relationships, and purpose. What struck me most was how much our interior lives overlapped. We were both stepmothers, navigating complex emotional terrain we had not anticipated. We shared a tendency toward self-doubt and a desire to live with intention despite uncertainty. Through her writing, I understood her as my grandmother and a complex woman - a kindred spirit.
Despite this intimacy, I carry considerable regret. I was not present in the ways I wish I had been. I never sat with her during chemotherapy treatments. I avoided calls. I rationalized these absences as a way of preserving my emotional bandwidth. In truth, they stemmed from the fear of witnessing her decline, of being helpless in the face of suffering, of acknowledging that my beloved grandma was dying.
When she entered hospice care, I drove home to Gillette, Wyoming. My father and mother had taken extended time off work to care for her. We fed her, adjusted pillows, and offered sips of chocolate Ensure. I remember my mother asking me to trim her fingernails, a simple act of care I couldn’t bring myself to do. I avoided that intimacy because it made the reality of her condition undeniable. I stayed a few days. Before I left, I told her I loved her. Her response, “Goodbye, sweetheart,” carried the weight of finality. We both understood what it meant.
When I returned to my apartment, I sent her the final email. By then, she was no longer checking her emails, but I still needed to write and process this finality. I told her I had made it home safely and that my cat was curled beside me. I told her it was okay to let go. I offered reassurances I wasn’t sure I fully believed but hoped might reach her in some metaphysical way.
I intended to see her again once my academic obligations lightened, but I took time for granted. Anyway, that opportunity never came. While preparing to teach my morning class, I received the call that she had passed peacefully in her sleep. My family had moved her to a nursing facility the previous evening, and I really think that she waited until then to protect my grandfather and father from the trauma of discovering her departure.
Her funeral marked the first and only time I saw my grandfather cry. Watching my father grieve his mother introduced another layer of sorrow, one that felt grotesque in its emotional weight. It is one thing to grieve your own loss; it is another to watch the people who raised you unravel in their own grief. In those moments, my own mourning receded, not because it lessened, but because I instinctively prioritized their pain over mine. I needed to be strong and offer steadiness while his world cracked open. My grief folded inward, quieter, more contained, shaped by a desire to hold space for his sadness, even as mine throbbed unspoken. We scattered her ashes on a hill at the family ranch, placing a bench at the site. When I visit, I sit there and speak to her. I recount updates about my life as though she is still listening. I apologize for not being around enough. While I understand she is not bound to any physical location, that bench has become a site of ritual and remembrance.
When I return to the ranch, I stay with my grandfather, aunt, and cousin. I sit in her recliner by the fireplace, gaze out the same window she once did, and imagine a world where she’s going to walk down the hall at any moment. Long enough to witness my academic achievements, writing career, and engagement. I envision her at my wedding, offering wisdom and warmth and anchoring the day with the same quiet grace that defined her life. I hope she is proud.
My grief is ambient and persistent. It is not always loud, but it is always there. It emerges in moments of joy, the instinct to share news, and the deep desire to feel her presence again.
Perhaps this is the enduring work of grief: not to move beyond it but to incorporate it into the fabric of one’s life. This is to allow memory to remain active and write our loved ones back into the world through story, ritual, and reflection. And to become, in some measure, the kind of person they once believed we could be.
