1 Year Ago

On January 13th, 2020, I lost my grandmother.

It was the first day of a new semester. I was getting ready for bed around midnight, and my brother sprinted out of his room to get my parents. My grandpa had just called, Grandma had passed out and was being rushed to the hospital. The four of us immediately got in the car and drove over.

We lived barely ten minutes from that hospital, but it was the longest drive of my life.

When we arrived, we were directed to the family waiting room in the ER, the room John Green once called on his podcast, The Anthropocene Reviewed, “the room they put you in on the worst night of your life”. My grandpa was already sitting there, my uncle and my cousin arrived a bit later.

I felt numb yet stiff, like any movement I made would somehow jinx the situation. It was eerily silent in the waiting room, but for my mom asking Grandpa what had happened.

I’m not sure how long we had been sitting there before a woman came in, asked if who we were there for, and said, “I’m so sorry for your loss.” I felt like I had been punched in the stomach, and I can still feel it as I’m writing this. My mom started sobbing, my dad and I holding her hands and reminding her to breathe. My uncle came in and the same woman barely said “I’m sorry” before he turned around and tried to leave. My dad followed him and convinced him to sit next to my mom.

Grandma had AFib, and a pacemaker. She had complained of chest pain earlier that day, and as the day went on she started feeling more and more sick. Eventually she asked Grandpa to help her to the bathroom. He got her there, she sat on the toilet, and then collapsed. She was most likely already gone.

She also had dementia, and the year or so before she passed was very hard to watch. She never forgot any of us, but she did mix up our names every once in a while—calling my uncle by my brother’s name, for example—and she clearly didn’t understand what we all were talking about at any given time.

Over the course of the past year, I’ve thought a lot about how Grandma would have processed 2020. I mentioned to my mom once that it would have been nearly impossible to explain why we had to wear masks, why we couldn’t go into restaurants, or why we didn’t go to church for a couple of months. I’m also, in a weird way, grateful that we didn’t have to have a socially-distant funeral. Her friends and family could say a proper goodbye, we could celebrate her life together.

My grandma was my best friend in the world. When I was growing up, she would play along with every weird scenario I came up with in my imagination, not even blinking at what I asked her to do. When I spent the night at her house, we’d stay up talking and laughing for hours. She would listen to me vent about things that were bothering me, really listen. I miss her every single day.

Statistically speaking, at least one person reading this also lost a loved one in the past year. Whether from COVID or something else, I see you and I am so sorry for your loss. I don’t really have any advice for grief, except something that my Sociology professor, who studied grief and bereavement, told us once: there really isn’t such a thing as the “stages of grief”, everyone experiences grief differently, so don’t beat yourself up if you’re still in denial, or thought you reached acceptance but really didn’t. Grief isn’t linear, friends. It’s hard and it’s messy and it’s heartwrenching. I hope you can find reasons to smile through the sadness.

—Abbie