I've never known a world without her

On the loss of my grandmother and how I go on

My grandmother died on Saturday.

This was her last year on St. Patrick’s Day. She was always proud of her Irish heritage.

We were in New York City, on a weekend adventure, when I got the news. I had been anticipating it all week. She’d been in a state of decline since the end of January but earlier in the week before her passing, she had shown signs of further decline. The hospice nurses, experts when it comes to end of life, predicted it would be the weekend or early the following week. So, every time I picked up my phone last week and saw a new text message, I wondered if this would be the one that brought news of her passing.

She turned 90 in December, a feat we all got to celebrate with her when we came home for Christmas. It was a good visit. I’d been apprehensive about it because her memory had started to go, and I wasn’t sure I could handle it if she didn’t recognize me. She was good at hiding her confusion, and I look enough like my mom that I wonder if she thought I was her. I have no regrets about how I spent my last visit with her.

My love for her, and hers for me, has never been in question.

I’m glad they got to visit us in Lancaster once before travel became too difficult.

You don’t know what you have till it’s gone

For all of my childhood, my grandparents lived across town in a Victorian-style (I think) home that I loved. It was the house where my mom and her brothers had been raised, the site of every family gathering I could remember. We spent Christmases gathered in the family room in front of the fireplace opening presents, Easters hunting eggs hidden throughout the house, and in the weeks leading up to our birthdays, we’d studied the cake pans in every shape imaginable before choosing the one Grandma would bake and decorate for us.

The house had a tower feature that housed a bumper pool table on the main floor and Grandma’s sewing room on the second floor. Sitting in the curved window seat felt like magic to an imaginative kid like myself. That house burned down almost 15 years ago but the memories remain.

My brother and I spent as much time with our grandparents as we did our parents in our younger years. At least, that’s what it felt like. I often tell people that they were like second parents to me. Many a Friday or Saturday night, we would sleep over and have game night. My love of board games is because of my grandparents.

My brother, my cousin and I spent so many summers getting into trouble or being put to work with my grandparents. Every reunion was special, even as adults.

I cannot go back to my hometown without memories popping up in every place that are tied to my grandparents. Church. The Dairy Queen. The old pharmacy building. The neighborhood where their house stood. They were fixtures in that community, even being named “Citizens of the Year” one year.

My grandmother wasn’t perfect; she had her flaws like any of us do, but when I think about her, she is one of the best people I have ever known. Well into my adulthood, she would send me a letter with a $20 bill stuffed inside. After their beautiful house burned down, she made cookies for the firefighters and first responders who had been there for them in their emergency.

Grandma and my daughter making cookies for the fire fighters

She’d lost almost everything and still she had a mind to give to others.

I never wanted for anything with my grandmother—not love or acceptance or support of any kind. She was always, always looking out for me. I want to believe she’ll be looking out for me still.

Because I don’t know how to live in a world without her. For almost 47 years of life, I had this amazing person in my life. I didn’t call her often or write her letters much anymore, but I always knew she was there.

Until she wasn’t. Isn’t.

They say you don’t know what you have till it’s gone, but I think I did know. I just can’t believe she’s actually gone.

One of my favorite memories: surprising Grandma by meeting her in Washington, D.C. while she was on an Honor Flight to the nation’s capital.

What I can believe

My grandpa’s been gone for almost a decade. My uncle, the oldest son of my grandmother, died not long before him. So many of my grandmother’s friends and family are gone. Her body was shutting down. She was ready to leave it all behind. She believed in a better place, a life after death, a reunion with those she loves and the God who created her.

My own beliefs waver, but if ever a person could know what comes after this human existence, it’s my grandmother. If she was ever in doubt, she didn’t show it. She believed she knew what awaited her when her body could no longer contain her soul.

Because she believed, I believe it, too. Even on the days I waver with unbelief, I hold on to the hope that one day we will all be reunited.

Me with both of my grandmothers several years ago. I miss them.

One of my favorite authors, Glennon Doyle, says that grief “is love's souvenir. It’s our proof that we once loved. Grief is the receipt we wave in the air that says to the world: Look! Love was once mine.” Grief is the proof that we have loved well. I think of this whenever I am mourning someone or something that meant a lot to me. Grief is nothing to be ashamed of, not something to be avoided. It is, in a way, a privilege because it means that I once had something, or someone, I cared so much about that it hurts to lose it, or them.

Grief takes different forms. When my grandfather died in 2016, I wailed and howled and sobbed. His loss hurt me in ways I didn’t know I could hurt. Since then, I’ve lost another grandmother and learned some new things about life and death. Experienced them, as well. After I got the news about my grandmother on Saturday, I sort of went numb. Later, though, I nearly had a panic attack on the streets of New York City walking back from dinner. There were too many feelings for my body to hold. I called my mom. I sobbed and wailed and let the feelings flow. After I got off the phone with her, I curled into Phil and just let myself cry.

We could have stayed in the city for a few extra hours, but I just wanted to go home. We had a lovely breakfast at a cute French bakery, then drove back to Pennsylvania to prepare for the week ahead. I have been in a sort of fog since we got back from the city. My brain feels disconnected from the rest of me, my body like it’s carrying a backpack of bricks. I am tired all.the.time but still shuffling through my days, doing what needs to be done.

I am sad for my family and myself. But the way my grandmother died gave us time to prepare ourselves. Hers was a slow glide over days. We knew it was coming. That doesn’t mean it will be easy to lay her to rest, to say our final goodbyes. But maybe it will be different?

Because she lived

What also helps me is knowing how much of my grandmother’s life has influenced mine, how much she still lives on in me and my children. If I tried to list all the ways, I think I’d run out of space.

There will always be things that make me think of her: ice cream, birthday cakes, board games, crocheting, musicals, home-baked sugar cookies, square dancing. I hope I never forget how she cheered for us at our sporting events. Or how much she loved my grandfather.

They were the cutest, IMO

She was ruthless when it came to board games, and I get that from her. One time she had us convinced that she’d fallen but she was just giving us a clue for the game.

I’m so glad my kids got to know her, too. She was as special to them as they were to her.

I knew her for 46 years of her life, and I still knew so little. I couldn’t tell you what her favorite ice cream treat from Dairy Queen was. Somehow, that seems like something I should know.

But I’m grateful for the time I had. I know not everyone is lucky enough to know their grandparents into middle age. I understand that this is a blessing.

It’s just, now I—and the rest of my family—have to figure out how to live without her.

Life may go on, but it’s never the same.