Going Home

The fireplace and the kettle are on and a record is playing.

In early September, my grandmother passed away. She was a constant in my childhood, flying from Seattle to Connecticut and staying with my family for a few months every year. I spent a lot of time with her, playing make believe or watching movies. Once, we took the train into New York City together and visited the Met Museum. She bought me chicken fingers for lunch, and noticed a little boy who was staring at my plate and felt compelled to buy him some too. My grandmother was generous in this way and she often thought of the people, even strangers, around her more than maybe anyone else would.

Madeline Miller wrote in The Song of Achilles that Patroclus’ ghost was “made of memories” and would that I could be too! My family moved abroad when I was in middle school and, as a result of this, the yearly trips became too difficult to arrange. I struggle to pull any complete stories of her out of my childhood haze, try as hard as I might. Instead, I remember the times I’ve seen her as an adult.

In March of this year, my dad rushed to Seattle to care for my grandmother after she had a series of concerning falls. At the end of his visit, he told us she’d receive more dedicated care from the senior home and she was seeming better and not to worry. For unrelated reasons, I was wallowing and feeling sorry for myself, but this snapped me out of it. I didn’t want to regret how I spent the precious little time I’ve been given. So, without really thinking, I flew up to Seattle for a weekend to see her. She was starting to exhibit symptoms of early Alzheimers and told me the same stories about her mother and the family farm over and over, again and again. Every time I listened like it was the first, asking her new questions, piecing together a past I’d sadly never tried to learn much about. She forgot many things while we spoke, but she never forgot who her family was.

This summer I saw her again for what would be the last two times. She had moved to a group home to receive 24/7 care. My dad and I sat with her on the porch, having some small conversation about my upcoming graduation and what would come next. It was not long before she asked my dad, when can I go home? I was overcome with emotion and had to turn my face away to cry, like a coward leaving my dad alone to bear the weight of that heavy question. He explained to her that this way we could be sure she would be fully taken care of and safe. That the people here were nice. That we would come to see her again. My dad is forever the dedicated father, the dedicated son, forever stretching himself in every direction he can to try to make sure we are all happy and well. When my grandmother mentioned she didn’t like the the color of her nail polish, it was my tiny, infinitesimal chance to give her something the way my dad would. I’ll bring something better for you next time, I told her, even though I didn’t know if she’d remember this promise.

The next time we visited I held her delicate hands as we sat on the porch, removing and re-applying new nail polish to each fingernail with care. Again, she asked, when can I go home? Again, my dad gently explained. When we left I felt deep down the sense that this was the last time, but I did not want to speak this aloud.

She didn’t say where she meant when she’d ask to go home. Maybe to the apartment in Seattle. Maybe to her parents’ farm. In either case, these places do not exist anymore in the way she imagines. After her passing, my aunt found a book on her bedside table about home being with God in Heaven. My mom tells us that my grandmother is young there, that when she asked to go home she was like a child again, looking for her Heavenly Father. I think my mom is right, I think this is what my grandmother really meant.

—

We went to church with our family friend, but she would also help out our parents and take care of us sometimes before we moved. She’d pick us up from school, cook dinner, stay home with us. She was warm and bright, and we loved her.

She sang soprano in our church choir but also as a soloist. I can remember the sound of her voice hitting very high notes, but never sounding shrill. I can remember the vibrato, the wavering quality she’d weave into a song. Sometimes, when I was alone, I tried to sing the way she did but I never could. My parents had always filled our home with music and she seamlessly joined the melody.

It’s difficult because, like with my grandmother, I cannot seem to grasp any strong memories of her. I search and search, digging through drawers and opening boxes. I find a blurry recollection of the Fourth of July at her mother’s home, running around in the backyard with my siblings, her making Jello for me. I find an incomplete conversation in the car as we waited to pick up my brother after school, confiding in her about a crush that I can’t even remember having. I can see her in our kitchen with me and my siblings, laughing at a goofy face my brother and I showed her how to make. I find a tape looping of us copying her husband’s English accent together, saucepan turning from a word into an unfamiliar sound.

What I can remember, vividly, is our parents telling us of her passing, the shock and confusion I felt, and the grief that my family shared. You can’t really prepare yourself for someone’s death, but it’s even more crushing when you expected to have so much more time.

If all we have left of someone are memories, what do we do when we can’t find those anymore? I like to think there’s some Law of Conservation for love. It can neither be created nor destroyed but simply exists, intangibly and with a strength so fierce we sometimes lose control. The love I had for her cannot disappear, and because of that I will always find her again, even when my memory fails.

—

I am still a little bit angry with a high school friend of mine, which is unfair considering that he and I will never get the chance to resolve it.

A lot of my friends were very close with him but he and I only properly met in Grade 11. He was boisterous and funny, often at the center of a group of people laughing at a joke I wanted to be in on, and he intimidated me a bit by how large his personality was. I wanted to be friends with him, but there seemed to be no opportunity for it. I can’t recall what caused it - playing in the school musical’s pit orchestra together, being in the same math class, or our moms being friends - but it did eventually happen.

There was a period of time where I felt like we were quite close. We were in a few activities and classes together so I saw him almost every day. He was a talented musician, and we auditioned for our school’s rock show as a duo, both of us on vocals, him on piano, and me on guitar. But for some reason or another, we started to drift. I remember being frustrated with him for the distance I felt, but rather than talking about it I kind of just gave up.

Covid and the burgeoning restrictions on public gatherings brought an abrupt end to our senior year and with it the big rock show performance vanished. The student producers scrambled to throw a makeshift rock show together for the final day of school and invited all the student bands to perform something, anything, off a few day’s notice. In my head, the last-minute performance felt like a “last chance” of sorts for the closeness of our friendship, but he didn’t really want to perform and I quietly held this against him without telling him how much I wanted to do it, let alone even that I wanted to do it at all. We left school still friends, of course, but not as close.

When he passed, he and I had probably not spoken in half a year, and even that was brief. I couldn’t stop wondering why, why I hadn’t called him once, why I hadn’t reached out and asked him how he was doing, why I hadn’t fought to stay better friends? I don’t presume that this would’ve changed the past or stopped what happened, but I do wish that we’d gotten to speak and laugh together one last time.

Of course, I’m angry with myself for not trying harder to show up as a friend, for not communicating my hurt when we drifted, for not being honest with him about the show. But a small part of me remains a little angry that he didn’t want to perform with me that day. Why couldn’t you have left me with that memory?

We were meant to perform Cigarette Daydreams by Cage the Elephant. To this day, I cannot listen to that song, or any song by Cage the Elephant, without being overcome with sadness. So I don’t listen anymore. But I still think of him often, more often than you’d imagine, and I wonder how much music the world had lost when it lost him.

—

Loss is circular in that your grief always winds up in the same place.

I wrote this in a poem a few years ago, after getting dumped. Reading this today, I feel embarrassed and self-absorbed and cliche. How could I have thought losing that relationship was tragic enough to warrant the melodrama of that sentence (or sincerely titling an article The Worst Pain I’ve Ever Felt) when people I love have died? Despite their origin, I’ve found these words coming back into my mind in a different light.

No matter where I go, my path will twist and turn and wind me back to grief for the people who’ve left. When I hear a song on the radio, when the choir sings at church, when I look at childhood photos. This will not stop being painful. But I have grown stronger and learned how to hold that pain. I imagine myself gently enveloping it with my arms, holding it closer until it dissolves into my chest, into my heart. Grief and love are not so different.

—

I am afraid of dying. When I was quite young I struggled with insomnia, spending sleepless nights thinking about the never-ending life that Heaven promises, how terrifying it would be in the absence of an ending. All the while it felt as if I was spinning uncontrollably beneath the expansive cosmos, shrinking smaller and smaller and smaller into nothingness. I’d cry loudly, hoping to wake up my parents and have them rush to comfort me and make it feel light and warm and safe again.

My mom was confused by my distress, and tried to softly dampen my sobs. She reminded me of the perfection of Heaven and the closeness we’d finally have to God. Besides, wasn’t the alternative much more frightening?

As wonderful as I knew Heaven would be, I couldn’t quell the profound terror the thought of eternity awoke in me. All I could do was avoid thinking about it entirely, change the topic in my mind if I got too close. I stopped crying in the middle of the night and sleep returned.

I still feel the same fear of eternity and I still avoid thinking about it. But I’ve found comforting thoughts too. People have described death as opening a door, as getting off a train, as falling into a deep sleep, and any of these may be true. However I may arrive, I imagine that the people I loved during my life will be there to welcome me into their arms. There’s nothing to be afraid of, they will promise me. I’ll finally understand and the fear I couldn’t shake during my life on Earth will melt away.

They’ve gone ahead and they’re waiting for me to come back home, the fireplace and the kettle are on and a record is playing.

—

Author’s Note:

I’d be lying if I said I didn’t feel uncomfortable with the idea of writing something about people who have passed away. They cannot tell me if they’re okay with what I’ve written and I know how painful it can be to have someone else try and tell your story for you. I also didn’t want to come across like I was mining content off of tragedies or making someone else’s death and pain about myself. But writing isn’t like that for me, it’s not really about being read by others but is a way I can process my most complex emotions. I tried to write as carefully and respectfully as I could and focus most on sharing memories and honoring the impact they’ve had on me, as that is all I am able to speak of. I hope my writing can reflect a fraction of my love for them and a more comforting look on death.