She died a little over a week before my birthday. My birthday isn’t great when it comes to grandmas. My other grandma died 3 days after my 13th birthday. I knew it was going to happen. The night she died, I went for a drive. I had visited her the two weekends before, but that weekend had decided to stay home. Hospice was there and she was on morphine. She wouldn’t have even known I was there. So I went for a drive on a windy road and around a lake that reminds me of Arkansas. I listened to Summer’s End by John Prine on repeat and I cried and I prayed. I don’t know if I believe in God, or a god, but I prayed anyways. I said goodbye. I got back to my apartment at around 11:45pm and at 12:15 my mom called me to say that my mema had passed. I don’t know how I knew it was going to happen that night.

After I graduated college I had a couple of months before my job started, so I visited my grandparents for a few days. My mema wanted some help going through some old evangelism materials and I wanted to try to know her beyond her being my mema. We stayed up late each night just talking – well mostly her talking and I listening. I learned so much about her in that weekend. She never really got to be Charlotte. She was always defined by her ability to have children and then raise them. She never got to have passions. She never got to have aspirations. She had to sneak to get her drivers license and never got to finish college. I feel so guilty that I never talked to her about feminism even if she wouldn’t have ever considered herself a feminist. I like to think that she was secretly proud of me for being so independent. To be a woman in a male dominated industry and to be living on my own doing whatever I want, because it’s an opportunity she never had.

Outside of her religion there were other things that Charlotte loved. She loved birds and flowers and nature. She also really liked learning about nutrition. She told me that if she could go to college nowadays she would study to be a nutritionist. She also loves music. I think that’s a big part of why she liked my papa. She says she’s tone deaf, but papa could’ve been a famous singer if he had wanted to. He always sings for her.

I have voicemails that I’ve kept of her. She starts every voicemail with “Hi Cassie, this is your mema”. She always called me sasserbug. In one of them she even said her phone number like I wouldn’t have it. One time I went over to try and help her learn how to use her phone. She couldn’t ever remember that the little triangle symbol was to go back. I can’t imagine how isolating it would feel to not know how to learn things that are so functional to living now.

For her funeral, all the grandkids were supposed to write a couple sentences for my Aunt to read. I wrote a short excerpt, but the night before the funeral, and after the viewing I wrote the following:

No matter what, mema and papa’s house was always there. I’d often visit during the summer or on spring break on my own. Spring break is usually during tax season, and with papa being a CPA, I spent a majority of my time with mema. She taught me how to do sodokus in the paper at a very young age and I still do them all the time. They taught me games like Yahzee and boggle with the letters. I learned about birds and squirrels and different plants. And I learned about God’s love and how intertwined he is in ever aspect of their lives. I remember in highschool being at their house when it way my day of the week during their prayer time. It was so touching to me that they spent time praying for each person in their family individually.

Mema always made me try things I didn’t like. If I said I didn’t like something I at least had to try it. And just for the record I was almost always right and the things were gross. I recognize that she did not want her funeral to be a sad event but instead a celebration. And while I can understand that, I am also sad. For her this life on earth was just the beginning, but for me in my now, she is not physically here with me anymore. She will not get to be at my wedding in the future. She will never meet my future children, and I mourn these and many other losses.

I often reach for comfort in the form of consuming media that related my feelings. Whether it emotes the same feeling or gives me another perspective on the same situation. This means I’ve been listening to a lot of sad songs and watching sad movies. I read a book on tuberculosis to relate to seeing someone you love sick and I’ve been reading an unfortunate amount of poetry. I will leave you today with a couple excepts that I’ve found comforting in this time, in hopes that it may provide comfort to anyone else here.

I heard a clip of Hanif Abdurraqib speaking on loss:

“The thing about loss is you don’t lose someone once, You lose someone a first initial time. That is the inciting event. And then if you live long enough without them, you lose them repeatedly for as long as you’re alive and they’re not. And that means that you have to get accustomed to burying someone repeatedly. Which, if not thought of in a way that is generous, can be too daunting to live with. But on the other hand, if you believe as I do that grief is kind of just an emotion knocking on the door of memory and asking you to recall something, then there’s real gratitude in that. There’s real gratitude in recollection. There’s real gratitude in me reaching for my mother’s voice even when I don’t retrieve it. Because I’m reaching for my mother nonetheless. It reminds me that I am losing a person over and over and over, but by losing them, I get to return to the site of their living that I can recall and that is celebratory.”

Another thing about my grandparents is that they love birds and so many of me memories are flooded with the sounds of birds on their back porch.

I’m reminded of an Emily Dickinson poem:

“Hope” is the thing with feathers.

“Hope” is the thing with feathers – That perches in the soul – And sings the tune without the words – And never stops – at all – And sweetest – in the Gale – is heard – And sore must be the storm – That could abash the little Bird That kept so many warm – I’ve heard it in the chillest land – And on the strangest Sea – Ye! – never in Extremity, It asked a crumb – of me.

I may not always be able to hear the bird in my soul singing in these times of despair, but it is singing nonetheless. At the times when it is audible, I will always hear my mema in it’s song.