On Writing & Grieving & My Late Grandmother
Forgive me for an unusual newsletter; this one marks my grandmother’s memory as a blessing
CW: This is a detour from my normal newsletter, and is a post is about the death of a loved one. It delves deeply into grief and death. If these topics are upsetting for you, be gentle with yourself.
Yesterday, my grandmother died. It was the Ides of March, and to be both cliche and honest, it did actually feel like being stabbed by a mob of conspirators, just internally.
I am direct about death; I write romcoms with death featured prominently, sometimes even personified, and for years, I’ve answered questions about why English teachers assign reading that ends that way with the reassurance that we all die eventually, and in that way, a book or story ending in a character’s demise is only following that person to the final stop on their journey.
But the weirdness of death, and of grief, is the achey way that it sits in the body after the pointed stabs of the knowing, the sharp intakes of breath begging for acknowledgement of the love that remains in the wake of the person. The world continues, impossibly the same, and yet so strange and different.
Her memories do not die with her; there is much inspiration in my books from my grandparents; they are the adults in my life I want to impress most. We celebrated her 100th birthday this past summer, and when I went to visit her afterwards, she reminded me (again) that I had better get a move on with writing, for she wouldn’t be around forever. As always, she was crisp, unflinching, and absolutely correct.
In her apartment, she had this small stone dog sculpture that she has had as long as I can remember, way back when she lived with my grandfather in a sprawling rancher nestled into trees that I loved so much. In some of my earliest memories I’m looking at the little stone dog, distracted by it when I should have been hunting for the afikomen (I was never the cousin to find it). That stone dog has always stood out large in my mind, despite being the size of a cocker spaniel puppy, its soulful glass eyes peering from the dark cut of the realistic carving, like an actual dog, if such creatures existed in dark gray. As a child, I was really into Spunky the TY beanie baby as a result of that little statue. So after my grandmother’s birthday celebration, I visited my grandfather’s grave, and thought a lot about grandparents, death, and stone spaniel sculptures.
I wove one into a project that I wrote in 2023, set mostly in graveyards, and if it ever makes it off my hard drive, well, then that little stone dog lives on. I saw it when I visited after her stroke, perched in her windowsill, a tiny gray gargoyle; overwhelmingly adorable and yet still a formidable guardian of the end of her life.
When they came to take my grandmother’s body away, the little stone dog went with her at the foot of the gurney. It turns out she did actually write into her will that she would be buried with it.
It’s funny, or maybe it isn’t funny at all, how the things she cherished most were so clear to me, even as a child. The stone dog. Family. A forthright willingness to be blunt that I am so honored to have inherited.
Hers was a death that I saw and felt coming in many ways; since she had a stroke two weeks ago, I’ve had these literal chest aches, like my heart is attempting to beat its way out of my body. Apparently, this is an actual medical *thing* that happens with grief. After ruling out the possibility that I, too, was dying, I had hours to process, driving up the New Jersey turnpike the weekend before last, and then turning around the next day and driving back, listening to the Apple Music Sad Bangers playlist the entire way, which was oddly comforting, if unsettling. I did not foresee the prep work for grieving including Post Malone and the Delaware Memorial Bridge, but here we are. Anyway, it turns out I could not prepare at all for the weight of it, but that doesn’t mean my body didn’t try; I feel as though my cells have been screaming at me for two weeks, shouting out that part of what spawned them was leaving. That part of what made them is gone.
That, I know, is not how cells work, but I am bookish, and not a scientist, so I would like to think that at a molecular level, my universe recognizes that someone significant to shaping it has passed on. And selfishly, I recognize that this means I, too, shall one day decay and fall away from the world.
I was thinking that maybe I should write something else with grandmothers, but it occurs to me that mine may be gone, a spark back to whatever creates human souls, and yet she still exists in perpetuity in my mind, and on my pages. There are already grandmothers written into all my work, both indirectly and, in reminiscing how direct she was, directly. I cherish that memory.
When I called her to tell her I’d sold a book, she repeated, frankly, as always, something along the lines of she wouldn’t be around forever, so I’d better hurry up. I laughed it off, and told her that she was only 100 and in excellent health. In my mind, she’d live until 120. In my mind, Goldbergs live forever. And I think maybe that’s because in my heart, they do.
One reason I have always loved books is that they are the only way to be immortal. For humanity in general to carry on, for the best of who we all are to continue, and yes, for me specifically to leave a mark in the sands of time, I hope. But I’m realizing in this season of my life that books are, more importantly, ways for the people we love to live forever. Ways for their memories to be a blessing after they are gone. Ways to make grief tangible and in naming it, know that it is forever. That we never let it go. And that is a beautiful thing, to never let the memory of the one we love fade.
So in honor of my grandmother, who died yesterday, just about three months short of 101 years on this planet, here are a few pictures and a grief “playlist” of poems that I put together. These are poems that I’ve looked to before for larger griefs: the genocide in the world, the cruelty, and now the more personal grief of individual loss.
May the memory of my grandmother, and of whoever you may have lost and continued to love, be a blessing.
Six poems that, odd or not—and I admit, some are strange choices for this topic—help me grapple somewhat with death and mortality.
One Art by Elizabeth Bishop
Because I Could Not Stop for Death by Emily Dickinson
Making a Fist by Naomi Shihab Nye
Facing it by Yusef Komunyaka
Ozymandias by Percy Bysshe Shelley
Incident in a Rose Garden by Donald Justice
Please excuse this brief detour from my normal newsletter contents. Stay tuned for a newsletter with updates soon. You can find my socials and other links here.
I am so sorry about the loss of your grandmother. What a beautiful tribute to her life <3
Per usual, I am blown away by your poignancy in the face of big feelings. This is a heart achingly raw and lovely tribute to grief and mortality. Love you 🖤