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My memories of Grandmother are few. She was generous and
fashionable and bought me my favorite dresses. Her Jacksonville drawl I did not much understand.
When she visited us in Maryland ,
she would take frequent smoke breaks; when we visited her, she would watch TV
in her den, cigarettes in hand. I came home from fourth grade one afternoon to
find that my father was on his way to North
Carolina because she had been taken by an acute form
of leukemia and was not expected to live out the month. I did not cry then, nor
when she died, nor at the funeral. We scattered her ashes in the garden at her
church. The photos from that day are gray with strained faces, for her death
was early and sudden.
I have learned, in the years since Grandmother died, to celebrate
the connections I have to her. She left me some small things: my thick, curly
hair and a pearl necklace and the small diamonds that now sit in my engagement
ring.
Also, a painting. Grandmother was an artist and recently
(after Grandfather died), I got to choose one of her paintings to hang in my
apartment. I picked a beautiful oil still-life of cut flowers. The painting is
bright with yellow and green and hope and light. Her life was not much these
colors. Grandmother battled depression most of her life. Though I have never
been clinically depressed, when I hear these stories I feel connected to her. I
am certainly more like her than I am like my Grandfather, with his winning
charm and his calm, loving approach to every situation. I have been broken and
angry and sometimes wondered if I could dig myself out from darkness and
apathy.
*
I was thirteen and summer whiled away. Camp and swim team
were over and I was home in my room, writing in my journal. And in the August
humidity I came upon the meaninglessness of life: how alone we are in our
thoughts and desires, how futile the day-to-day can be. I wrote through it,
hoping it would go away when school started, when I saw my friends again. But
hugs were scarce and the Backstreet Boys could not give the right words to
define my thoughts. There was a hurricane and I was at home in the gloomy dark
in my room and the rain and the thunder and the tasks of life were gray and
heavy on me. Homework, check, piano, check, soccer, cancelled. And no one to
explain it to, and no way to explain it.
I was twenty and my head was swirling with images of small
huts and banana trees and beautiful brown-skinned children; my head was
swirling with the philosophy and science and scholarship that seemed to tear
down my faith; my heart swirling with first love and first heartbreak and jealousy
and anger and fear of the future. I collapsed into it, and for a year I was
lost and alone and tearful, staying in on the weekends and skipping meals and
sitting idly in front of the computer.
I was twenty-six and married and in a new place and I felt
like I had left everything behind and I was alone on a couch with a
subscription to Netflix and bags and bags of chocolate chips.
*
I don’t know the details about Grandmother’s depression,
when it began, how bad it got, if it was precipitated by specific experiences. And I don't really compare myself to her. I have been graced to escape the brunt of darkness—for
me there has always been sun and laughter. My strand of melancholy has probably
just been about average. It gives me a little empathy, and a little extra passion
to play deep melodies on the piano and write things raw when I can.
But since I was nine when she died, that connection is what
I have, along with the ring on my finger that reminds me of how Grandfather
never stopped loving her, never lost respect for her, even with all she went
through, even though he couldn’t understand it.
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