I’ve been working on this for the last week. It’s definitely a little too long and needs to be edited, but in the spirit of being vulnerable and talking about what I miss, here is the story of the last day I saw my grandmother:
I miss my grandmother. It's strange to miss someone who comes to you every night in your dreams. She looks up from the crossword of the Daily News to sing-song me a good morningggg; raising her hand to welcome me through the arched doorway of her petite kitchen. Farina with a little milk, honey, and a sliver of butter waits for me at the table the way she made it special each morning since I was a child. I always bypass the bowl and frantically ask her if she is real, is she okay, if she is in any pain, is she with grandpa? She never says anything. Just smiles.
My grandmother loved the morning. She’d be up at 4:30am preparing gravy for the day. I wish I loved the morning as much as she did when I was a kid, teen, twenty-something living at home in the Bronx with my grandparents. I wish I would have spent more time savoring every last moment pressed into her antique, wooden chairs noticing the rips on her lemon-patterned tablecloth. She was always the first face I saw before the rest of the world had a chance to wake up.
I would drink water, orange juice, seltzer, soda, and eventually coffee at that table. It fit squarely in the middle of the cramped space surrounded by the oven, fridge, pantry, sink, and a myriad of trash receptacles. Even though it was a tight squeeze, it felt comfortable. Nothing could bother me sitting there with my grandmother.
An hour after she died, I was sitting at that kitchen table sobbing into the lemons, praying to God to bring her back. It was the day after her birthday and the day before Mother's Day. Up until that point, I had been in and out of the hospital for the last month getting to know the day nurses and doctors and her feeding routine. It was simultaneously a short road to her end while being an excruciatingly long process to witness. My mother, who had flown into town hours earlier, called me from her hospital bed. If you want to see her before . . . The pause got to me. This would be the time.
I was very still that entire Uber ride from the bottom of Manhattan to the east side of the Bronx; trying to process what exactly I would be walking into. My mother had been in New York for only a few hours, but before that was when my grandfather died four years prior, and before that was my college graduation seven or eight years prior. We only had a handful of phone calls and a bevy of fights between us in those 3ish times we had seen each other in the past decade or more. I thought about my grandmother and how she would walk me to the drug store to buy me tampons, how she would tell me that my blush was too much or that my chest was poking out. I never had that with my mother, that kind of connection and comfort that made the hard stuff easy. And now, I was about to walk into a broken relationship in order to say goodbye to the one that carried me up until this moment.
The Uber pulled up to the side of the hospital. The driver turned to me slowly from his seat uttering be safe as I pushed open the door. I ran to the front entrance. If this was a normal visit, I would have had to wait in at Covid check point i.e. a line of people who are ushered from one room to the next, given a form to fill out that states that no, you do not have Covid, and listen to people complain for 40 minutes about not wanting to wear a mask. I had to be recognizable because when I bypassed the line, the room, the form and went straight to the main security guard, he pushed me to the front and got me on the elevator with tears coating the top of my double mask.
I could feel my knees shaking as the piercingly sterile elevator ride to the 10th floor climbed and stopped and climbed some more. Ding!, the elevator said to me. I was annoyed by the cheeriness, it was not the time. I had to walk off the elevator, turn right, go past the double doors, make eye contact with all the nurses who diligently took care of my grandmother, and find my way to 1017 at the end of the hall. My pace was quick but determined to hit every point of my foot on the linoleum floor. Heel toe heel toe heel toe, as if this would slow down what I would eventually discover: my grandmother, unconscious, lying in a hospital bed without the ability to smile at me and tell me something she disliked about my hair. My mother sat on the window sill. Hi Sweetheart. She always said that to me in hard moments, even in our hard moments.
I started to cry and leaned into my mother. I missed this so much even in a moment where I was about to miss the woman who truly raised me. I sat by the bed and held my grandmother's hand. All of the scars and bumps were still there even if her signature olive skin was not. She was pale and grey, the complete antithesis from the women who walked the mile to church every Sunday, cooked meals that not only fed my family but the whole neighborhood, who provided childcare for all her grandchildren, nieces, nephews, kids on the block decades after her own kids needed to be looked after. Her head rested to the left of the pillow with her sleeping face pointed right at me, her breathing low and pulse at a crawling pace on the monitor. I told her I loved her, that she was my everything, thanking and kissing her hand to show my gratitude for everything. The tears continued to pool into my mask as I rested my forehead on her.
There was nothing else left to do but make her comfortable so I turned to my phone and played my "For Millie" playlist consisting of opera, mo-town, 50s girl groups, Frankie Valli, The Platters, and the like. I had made it a few days prior while en route to sit with her in that very same hospital room. Luciano Pavarotti was the backdrop to my favorite memories of my grandmother. She would always sit on the stoop of our Bronx home with the radio on and a glass of wine as she entertained the side chats and gossip from her various neighbors. The opera invited everyone to gather around her on those off-white steps. I loved sitting with her there. A second to the kitchen.
The whole room went quiet, the beeping stopped, ‘O Sole Mio just hit its final operatic crescendo. I heard my mother behind me. She's gone. An energy hovered over us all in that moment. It poured warmth and sunshine and calm over my shoulders, then vanished into the ceiling.
A nurse came in moments later. He was kind and asked to do the final vitals check. Confirmed. The nurse began to remove the tape and monitors off her body, opening up the front of her hospital gown to reveal her chest and a large scar that ran vertically down from her breast plate to the top of her stomach. She was, is, beautiful, so strong, so alive even in death. The scar was the thing we thought would kill her 15 years prior — a heart valve transplant that was risky at the time, but she pulled through, making jokes up until the day she was unconscious that she had pig parts in her. She looked good for her age, my mother said. You're lucky you got her skin, not like grandpa. My mother, who had not ever comforted me about anything in my entire life, knew how to make me smile in the most tragic moment. I finally let go of my grandmother's hand.
The patient on the other side of the room slowly pulled the curtain back. I don't mean to interrupt. I'm sorry for your loss. I spoke to her a few times before she couldn't speak anymore, and she was such a lovely lady. So funny. My mother answered. I couldn't. I didn't want to acknowledge what just happened. I grabbed my mother's bag as she left the room, directing me to pull the curtain so that no one could see my grandmother's body when walking by. I went to pull the curtain but froze. I love you, I miss you, I said, without regard to who could see or hear me. I uttered my final whisper, goodbye grandma. I turned to see nurses, doctors, and patients standing in the hallway waiting for me to leave the room. They all quietly said their condolences, their sorrys, how much they prayed for her recovery. She was such a good friend, said one of the nurses who just so happened to be one of my grandmother’s friends from the block. Another one touched my arm and told me that my grandmother visited her son in the hospital when he was sick. And another, her doctor, who has been more like a family member for as long as I could remember, cried when I said Thank you for being here. I caught up to my mother by the same elevator I came in from. Hi Laura. I hadn't heard her say my name in years. Ding! the elevator said again in its same cheery way, the same way my grandmother would greet me every morning when she had Farina ready for me. Time to go, Laura.
I miss being able to stay awake until 4 a.m.
I miss whole milk. I miss being able to purchase a gallon of whole milk without having the plant-based milk juice army yell at me.
I miss riding my bike to Queens and back from my tiny bedroom in Crown Heights.
I miss tattoos. I miss mentally coaching myself to stay still, to not pass out, to keep a straight face while the machine reverberates on my skin.
I miss being kind. I am nice, nice is safe. Kindness goes beyond what you need to help others even if it’s difficult. Nice is easy.
I miss Bronx summers, fireflies, and 7-Up floats with my grandfather. I bet you don’t know what an egg cream is. Or the color of the floor in the St. Benedict Church. It’s green and beige. You’d think I’d marvel at the stain glass windows inside but most of my time spent there has been with my head down looking at the floor, praying to give me back the people I miss.
I miss childhood. I didn’t have one after my brother died when I was 5. I guess I don’t miss it. More, I wish I had it. Maybe I would miss things like running around or screaming for no apparent reason or scraping my knee. But you can’t miss what didn’t happen.
I miss 8pm bedtimes. I shudder to think of all early bedtimes I skipped after giving my grandparents a hard time. They let me stay up and watch I Love Lucy and Welcome Back, Kotter and The Jeffersons. I would stay awake all night so I wouldn’t miss what happened to Jan Brady. While not a middle child, my earliest identifying memories are of her. I would fall asleep for a few hours and wake up to my grandfather bringing in the paper, a bag filled with bagels and rolls and crumb cakes, and a small coffee from the corner store.
I miss eating solely the crumb and never the cake. I miss him laughing at my plate.
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Bad Fat Black Girl: Notes from a Trap Feminist by Sesali Bowen
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You Know What I Don’t Miss . . .
Going into the office on my period — I can’t believe we did this while carrying our oversized tote bag filled with workout clothes, dry shampoo, lunch, our work computer, and extra pants/tampons in case we had a leak situation.
Saying yes to events I don’t want to go to — Missing out is the new yolo.
Alcohol — I will have a drink every once in awhile, but it’s very few and very far between now. Hangovers are not in the stars for me anymore.
Uncomfortable shoes — If I’m honest, y’all will be lucky if I return to society in anything other than Adidas slides.
Men at bars — Over it.
Caring about Kanye West — I get it. He’s a self-proclaimed genius who moved from producer to musician and loves the color beige. But like….the Monster video from 2012. I won’t even link it here. I can’t watch it again or care what he does.
Box dying my hair — We do a cut and dye once a year from a professional and leave it.
Jeans — Can we just cancel denim?
Unpaid internships — Like, yay…the youth need experience. But no company should expect a legit child to be able to pay rent and expenses on experiences. And if they can, you’re only hiring the offspring of 1 percenters that don’t really need the big break. I SAID WHAT I SAID.
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