I lost my grandma earlier this week. It was very sudden, and unexpected considering she seemed perfectly healthy and full of energy. Words like sad or even grief don’t feel remotely big enough to describe the gap that she leaves in my life. I don’t think I’ll ever understand how a person that had seen so much loss and grief in her own life, still managed to be so joyful and kind. Ironically, as much as I’ll miss all the wonderful things about her, the thing that I’m missing the most right now is her incessant nagging; nagging me to stop sitting “like a construction worker,” to not go outside with wet hair, asking me if as a fully grown adult I had eaten that day, to stop wearing sneakers to weddings…
When I lost my dad, as early as I did, I convinced myself that universe owed me one and I would get the time I needed with her, but in reality no time would be enough.
Most people in her life perceived her as a stoic mother of a lost war hero, and as much as that memory of her is respectable, I wish everyone would also remember her as an absolute riot; a woman who at 73 years of old climbed to the top of arc de triomphe while cussing me the entire time, a woman who could eat a whole pizza pie, WHILE complaining about American food, and a woman who I once caught cutting a hole in the window screen of my rental, just so she could sneak a cigarette without going outside into Brooklyn winter. She would absolutely chew me out for blowing up her spot like this, but she would also be quick to forgive me once I bribed her with baguettes and Turkish coffee.
I don’t have the best relationship with faith, but since she did, I just hope that she’s gotten to reunite with my dad and he can take back over being the object of all her bottomless affection.
