Springtime Letter to Grandma: How Grief Translates to Hope
I remember when mom told me you were gone. I was sitting exhausted on the sidelines at basketball practice. My coach handed me my phone. Mom called. “Grandma is gone,” she announced over the phone, “come straight to the hospital.”
It felt unreal for a moment. I even let out a tiny laugh, as if it was a joke. and it felt like it was one. You have been next to me for my entire life. How could you just be… gone? It felt wrong. Strangely uncomfortable. No, I wasn’t angry. At least not right now… It was emptiness that filled me, as if a part of my life left once and for all.
You left us in spring, when the streets started to fill with life and blooming cherry blossoms. Just four springs ago, we built LEGO together–a blue Bugatti Chiron. You would watch me scrambling around, finding the pieces. Your bright laughter echoing from your favourite red armchair in our living room–”you get the best view of the park from here”, you often said. Now, I sat alone in the armchair, gazing at the park view you once loved. I watched a boy chasing after a Frisbee in the fresh green fields. I watched a few young ladies laugh too loudly at a joke–I presume it’s funny, but I couldn’t hear a thing. I watched the light rise and fall through the window where you used to sit next to me, where you used to whisper tenderly to my ear, “oh my dear, I know you’re destined to do great things to this world.” Oh how much I wanted that moment to stay, to be next to you forever, and how much I wished you to be here and see me once again. To properly say goodbye. But life never stops for you. Never.
I hate that. I am furious, for what right does the world have in taking you away from me, what justice is there to let a beautiful soul die so young. The world is fair in the way that it is unfair to everyone. I know that. Yet still. I want time I need time I want time to stop ticking so that I can sit and think and grieve I wanted to grab the clock and shatter it into twenty thousand pieces I demand to the night to hide the dawn for as long as my heart keeps aching I want a whole world gone for what is a world worth without you I know time as merciless as it is won’t spare us a single second but that’s not the point I still reach for it I still beg for it I still dream of it I still hope for it. Wait. Hope. I said hope.
No, I’m not angry anymore. I stopped looking for when it all made sense. “Carry on; we always wish you the best in life.” Those were your last words to me, two days before your passing. Yes, I found mercy in the way you left. You left peacefully in dignity, in a way that left behind nothing but the greatest memories, most tender moments, unforgettable conversations—how lucky are we to have these memories together? How fortunate is it for you to know that, regardless of anything, someone out there still keeps your picture next to their bed?
“Death is not the only way to die, though it can be argued that it is the most merciful,” wrote Hanif Abdurraqib You will be forever thought of, the centre of my thoughts in the late nights I couldn’t fall asleep. No, I wasn’t sad when I grieved for you. I am thankful, thankful for all the time God spared between us.
Now is the time to cast our gaze on grief for one last time. I once resented it. I thought naively that it was my adversary, the mountain I needed to traverse through. The sudden flood of tears, the silence after a scream. But no, grief never was that. It was the reminder of what mattered, the thread connecting me with those that were long lost. It is grief that accompanies me in the depths of my despair, when I hear the gentle voices of all those I loved, gently nudging me, telling me to go on, to be who I want to be one day. I guess that’s what people mean when they say hope.
So I will, as I carry on in my life, to live for what has been taken, to remember and cherish those moments of intimacy. To let the bright rays of the sun shine on you, even when you never asked it to. There is strength in that. There is hope in that.