I normally post on wednesdays.

NOTE: This Post is going up late because I spent weeks struggling to finish it. Today, it’s finished.

I also normally post midday. But sometimes life throws you curveballs.

Last week, my spouse’s grandmother (who I know as “Gram”) had a stroke. Days later, it was confirmed by her nurses and doctors that she was dying. Yesterday shortly before 6 pm on March 14th, she passed away.

It’s a complicated story, losing Gram. We knew it’d come eventually. She had fairly severe dementia and while her brilliance kept her together as long as it could, it’d been years of fighting and it wasn’t improving. We knew dementia ends how it ends. But this experience was a shock to the system that turned into a pressurized microcosm of the slow stress burn we all felt for the past few years—including Gram. And it was one of the most lovely and difficult experiences in my entire life.

Death has been an active character in my life since I was young. My first definitive memory that I can pin down is being four years old and walking into my great grandfather’s lonely bedridden room and holding his hand. I don’t remember how long—I was a child. Seconds could’ve been hours to me. But it was long enough to matter. To know this man wasn’t well and he was alone and to know he was too weak to squeeze back. But I don’t remember much else about his dying except that it happened. All other subsequent deaths felt so sharp, sudden, and taboo. Hospital doors I wasn’t allowed past. Empty spaces we weren’t supposed to talk about. Feelings meant to burst out in funeral parlors and quiet corners then abandon. Waxy yet powdery faces in caskets that smelled wrong and looked like slumbering skinsuit doppelgangers of the people I once knew.

Gram wasn’t like that. Once we knew, we spent 12+ hours at her bedside for over a week. A dozen family members found their ways across town and even across the country to be with her. Everyone held her hand. Sang her songs. Shared stories and memories. Waded through the beautiful moments of her final words of love, and the hard ones like when her breathing got hard to hear. And the end wasn’t some hidden secret to be whisked away and sanitized. She died surrounded by people who loved her.

It’s not news to this blog that I am not close to my family, but death had always been such a pillar of my role. Death was frequent and common and I was to hold hands and cheer people up and listen to their tears. I was good at it. Intuitive. So I became my own sort of deathbed companion for the people around me. Even long afterwards, I’d be called upon to hold my brother when he cried or comfort my mother when she felt sad. It was simply a thing I did, a kindness taken from me. It was just what I did and as exhausted as I always felt, I was meant to cry alone hours later. Because apparently it was easier to be held by me than hold me. One of my aunt’s favorite quotes was: “If you keep crying like this, you’ll pop a blood vessel”. The older and lonelier I got, the more I hoped for it to happen.

So a quiet, familair part of me prepared myself for this whole experience. For the strange taboo, for the comfort I’d give, for the blood vessels I might pop all alone in my room. And parts of it was familiar. But others…

I could go over a lot of moments. The hugs she gave people. The squeezes. The compliments and kindnesses my spouse’s family gave right back to me. But I think one of the most unexpected and important moments came from my spouse’s father.

We were driving back to Gram’s assisted living facility with food for everyone. We’d just gotten the call that it happened—while we were gone, Gram passed away. I think my spouse and I were just kinda of numb. With tacos in the back seat, we just kept driving. Ten minutes were at Gram’s. I had long prepared myself to comfort the family: his dad just lost his mother. So did his aunt. His cousins and brothers all just lost their grandmother.

When we walked in the door, the first person I saw was my spouse’s father. I immediately opened my arms for him. I hugged him and squeezed, ready to listen to whatever he needed to say. He just lost his mother.

And then he said, “She loved you.”

I don’t often get startled by my emotions much anymore. Being a bipolar teenager saps a lot of the thrills and surprises out of the whole situation. But in that moment, I felt them burst forward, burning and sweet, up from my sinuses and straight to my eyes. I was crying, not for them, not for her, but for me. And I’m not sure I had done that yet the entire week.

Grief brings out a lot of complicated feelings. It can bring out the worst in people, even. But it also can inspire some of the best good.

Good family is really, really good, guys.

And Gram made that family, so I’m pretty fucking thankful for that.

Makes taking 4 weeks to finish a blog post feel worth it.