Ara Ara’s Mind

{AN: I wrote this during my Creative Non-fiction class. I lost my grandmother in September of 2012 and have been dealing with that lost for years. As I have grown, I feel my grief surrounding her death has found new things to miss about her. I think this piece really encapsulates all I was feeling about her at the time. Enjoy.}

“Do you even remember what she looked like?” My mom asks as she thinks of her mother in our living room.

What should I say? I can’t say “I mean no I never really looked at her face until she died.” or “Not really.”

But I can’t lie.
I replay that scene as if it happened yesterday.
I settled for a “Kinda. I mean, I have fond memories of her.”
I comfort my mother who is sitting on our old burnt red couch. The same couch that my brother and I were sitting on when we found out she died.
Unsuspecting that something bad had happened. Being called downstairs, into the living room we rarely all occupy at the same time. Not noticing the tears in my mother’s eyes. Not taking into consideration the fact that my father, who did not live with us, was there. Feeling the stiff air in the room. It is as if everyone knew the situation that occurred and I was left out. Eleven-year-old me, confused, scared, and worried. Then, the words left her mouth.

The edges of my vision turned black. Like a frame surrounding that exact moment.

I didn’t know what to do. What to say.

She was gone. Forever.

Was I supposed to cry? How come this time she died?

I didn’t know the pain my mother, or even my aunt were in. How were they grieving? What were they blaming themselves for?

But as I’ve aged I realized that in that moment of being there, seeing her and it happening. The finality of it all. All they could think was “How am I going to do this without her?”

That thought is something they carry around everywhere. Within every milestone or every mishap. It is a thought that never ceases to take over their minds.

I didn’t think about all the things she was going to miss out on in my life. I was still expecting her to be at my high school graduation. I saw her in the audience at every dance competition after her death. I can see her sitting with my mom at my college graduation. She was supposed to be grabbing onto my grandfather for dear life when she walked down the aisle at my wedding.

But she has been reduced to just an empty chair in the crowd.

No one ever thought that she would die at 57. Everyone thought she would live way past that. She was supposed to be at my college graduation. She was supposed to be at my wedding. She was supposed to be here.

But she isn’t.

Death is just one of those things we can’t imagine happening until it does.

Nothing we did at that moment would have changed the outcome.

“…Try to picture what it’s like to not exist. You can’t do it. You’re imagining darkness, black.

But there will be no black. There will be no color because there will be no you to perceive it. And your mind recoils from that idea. It’s simply unable to conceive of its nonexistence, and so it concludes that it’s impossible; that you’ll live forever. But you won’t.”

This quote is from the opening monologue of an episode of Adam Ruins Everything named

“Adam Ruins Death.”

Every once in a while, I realize the reality of that.

Death has always been and will continue to be unimaginable and unpredictable.

That is hard for me to understand.

It is hard to accept.

Where would my consciousness go? Would it just drift through open space and never find a body again? Would it find its way into someone else, making me their past life? Or would it be gone, erased, deleted from my mind and everyone else’s?

Not able to smell the tang of my childhood home. Not able to feel the warmth of my mother’s hugs. Not able to see my siblings getting old.

That can’t be.

We can’t just be dead. Unable to feel the sun beaming on my face. Unable to see a sky filled with stars. Unable to smell cookies being baked.

It is hard to imagine that we don’t go anywhere.

It is hard to accept that you’re just gone.

When you’re not. Not entirely.

My grandmother died nine years ago . She is gone.

There is no reason she should be. She had battled with Lupus and heart disease for years. We had finally gotten her a scooter, so she to get around easily. The day before she died she was talking and smiling and laughing.

There is no way any of us could’ve seen this.

I still replay the memories of going over to that 70’s style house with three floors and eating the Kid Cuisine with chicken nuggets, macaroni, and a brownie that she specifically bought for me.

I still think about playing in my aunt’s old room which was filled with a wall of Barbies that she got from the neighbors because she thought I would enjoy them.

What would she think of me now?

Then I was just an eleven-year-old girl with a bad attitude and now I am twenty with a bad attitude.

Would she be proud of me for graduating high school and making it to college? Would she notice the growth I had gone through? Going from a shy little girl to an outspoken adult. Would she love me past my mistakes? Past my pettiness. Past my rudeness towards my parents, her daughter.

What if she has nothing to say, or think, or feel about me?

She can’t. Her consciousness is somewhere else not here or anywhere.

And yet it feels like it still holds so much weight. Still catches you off guard.

It feels like she’s still here.

It’s like when your cousin dies and you still think they’re coming to Thanksgiving and they’re going to ask you all these questions about dancing, or how school is going, or if you’re still with your boyfriend, but they won’t.

They can’t.

They won’t be there to share their opinions about if you’re still dancing or if you have any shows coming up or about how tall you have gotten or how pretty you are.

They have no opinion.

Only the opinion you think they would have. Only the opinions they had while they were living that you carry around.

It is hard to accept that the opinions you think they have are just your own.

It is hard to imagine that no one is watching over me.

In death, it is easier to assume that she is still here. That she never left in the first place. It is easy to think that she is going to be there.

But she won’t.

Accepting that she is gone feels like I am erasing her.

The scariest part about erasing her is knowing that one day, I’ll get erased too.

Works Cited

“Adam Ruins Death”, Adam Ruins Everything, created by Adam Conover, Season 1, Episode 12,

Big Breakfast and College Humor, 2015.