For My Grandmother: A Cold Hard Truth

Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about my grandmother.

My Nan-Nan- I could tell you stories about this woman. She had her weird quirks- was crazy paranoid- but she was still my nan-nan. And I loved her more than anything.

She passed away almost two years ago now. It still feels like it just happened yesterday. I think a lot of this comes from not having that closure, and the fact that I never got to say goodbye. I still hold a lot of anger because of this, but more importantly, because my nan-nan passed away feeling unwanted- unloved.

All because of greed. Not many people know the whole story- the real story.

So here’s a story for you. It may not be the fiction that I’m used to writing, but it’s a story nonetheless. One that I need to tell- for me and for her. And one, I wish wasn’t true at all.

My grandmother had health issues for a very long time. She had thought she was dying for years before she actually did. She was always been preparing for it, and I think, trying to make us ready for. You would think that we would have been more prepared for it when it happened. But, you’d be wrong. It was one of the biggest shocks of my life.

My mom- my grandmother’s daughter- woke me up at around 1:30 in the morning. “Nan-nan’s passed away.” I remember her saying.

I was shocked. I couldn’t believe it. It couldn’t be true.

My parents went to the hospital and I stayed home and waited. She had been admitted into the hospital for pneumonia a day or so prior. We knew that much. What we didn’t know is that she wasn’t doing very well.

My uncle- my nan-nan’s eldest son- was living with her at the time. And for some reason, he’s the one that got the call that family needed to come in to say their goodbyes.

This call came at 11:00pm. What happened between this time and the time we got a call after 1:00am saying she had passed away?

My uncle and his new girlfriend decided that instead of letting his family know- and instead of actually giving a shit about anyone besides themselves- they would go through my grandmother’s apartment looking for money and drugs, and pack up a car full of whatever the hell they wanted. All the while my nan-nan lay dying in the hospital. All. By. Herself.

What were her last thoughts before she passed? What did she feel in her last moments? These thoughts will haunt me for the rest of my life. I can guess what she thought, what she felt in those moments, and it kills me. Every day.

Family members snub us for not giving my uncle his “fair share” of my grandmother’s things, which is disgusting to even think about. Money. Materialistic goods. That’s all my grandmother was to these people.

She wasn’t a person. She wasn’t someone that my sister and I would stay the night with, watching “Jurassic Park” and eating our weight in Domino’s Pizza. She wasn’t the person that would make her family homemade gifts for Christmas because she couldn’t afford to buy gifts for everyone (and she just really loved crocheting and crafts). She was just a means for obtaining more.

They wanted money and stuff when she died.

I just wanted my nan-nan back. I wanted to say goodbye. I wanted her to know we cared, that she wouldn’t die alone.

I wrote a poem after she passed, which I’ll leave with:

A loved one lost-

friend, mother, grandmother.

Gone too soon,

we will never forget.

Like a morning frost,

you seeped into the Earth.

But we are still here,

shivering from the cold.

You may be gone,