A song of becoming (for my grandmothers)

The best I can do is remind myself of what I carry with me as talismans, not of loss, but life.

My Grandma passed away on Good Friday.

It was a blustery, bright afternoon. I chose not to go to the hospital this time. Instead, I watched Noah play with his cousins in the little half-fenced-in yard of the rented Airbnb while the rest of our family gathered by her bedside.

Walking around her house early Sunday morning, the frogs and crickets sang a serene remembering. Coffee cup in hand, the last I will drink on her wrap-around porch, I stared at the empty fields, waiting for the arrival of Spring. 

It is impossible to experience new grief without past grief bubbling up to the surface, a composite of loss, layered like soil below shaky ground. “I told her to say hello to Dad for us,” my sister shared when they returned home from the hospital. And I immediately burst into tears.

Three losses in four years.

There’s no way to quantify or measure the effect. But I see hints of it reflected in my eyes, in a body that’s more tired than it’s ever been. It shows up in my dreams or when I catch myself clinging to a past that no longer exists. 

And then there are the aftershocks, the quivers that ripple beyond the initial experience— a shift in the dynamic between friends. Moving to a new home. A rift between surviving family members, an awkward and uncomfortable change in identity. 

I have been trying to make sense of my childhood for so long– telling and retelling the stories that shaped me, striving for acceptance and understanding. I’ve poured so much time and energy into mending and healing and loving what was. Now that it’s gone, now that the houses are empty and the hearth gone cold, I don’t know how to move forward. 

Me pictured with my Great-grandmother Doze, Grandma June, and Grandma Mary

The foundation I relied on, the one I thought I’d build upon with my own family disappeared, just when I needed it the most. The day will come when I will see this loss, this clearing of the way as an opportunity. A chance to create something entirely new. To live and build a life beyond the old template and stories. I’ll summon the courage to face the unknown like a blank canvas instead of a terrifying abyss. Maybe.

The best I can do is remind myself of what I carry with me as talismans, not of loss, but life. 

A song of becoming (for my grandmothers)

One was fierce, the other kind. One big, bold, and southern. The other soft, petite, demure. The differences between my grandmothers are many.  Born on the southern border of Oklahoma, my Grandma Mary was unwanted, a child of accident who always knew it. Raised during the Depression, her father was an Irish musician, her mother a woman whose first husband was jailed for bootlegging whiskey.  My Grandma June was a native of the Rocky Mountains, the only beloved child of great-grandparents I never knew. Pictures of her perfectly coiffed hair and big smile speak of childhood privilege. Not wealth, necessarily but not wanting. She married my grandfather, her high school sweetheart at eighteen. Four children later in her early thirties, she was diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis and spent the rest of her life in a wheelchair.  To say their impact on my life was significant would be an understatement. I grew up ten minutes down the road from each. Their homes were a refuge from my own, safe places that offered the cushion of a warm embrace, homemade ice cream, dress-up clothes, and room to play. I learned how to wait until the hashbrowns were crispy before flipping them, that it’s a woman’s right to change her mind, and that fear is a powerful force, as limiting as love is freeing but not quite, from my Grandma Mary. Her anxiety, tendency to hoard antiques, and faith in Jesus colored her life like a kaleidoscope of contradiction.  Married to my grandfather for over fifty years, she taught me that the longevity of a marriage does not determine its quality, that if you wait patiently for the sky to fall, eventually it will, and if you build a shelter from the world, it can become the very thing that imprisons you. From my Grandma June, I learned that quiet doesn’t mean naive, that humor can make the thing that paralyzed you have less power, that stature has nothing to do with how you earn respect, and that knobby hands can still communicate messages of love.  I asked her once the meaning of love. She took her time before scrawling on a Post-it note. Her answer? Sacrifice. It might take me the rest of my life to understand what she meant. I inherited my Grandma Mary’s anxious nature, her love of bacon, and sometimes cruel criticism of men. She passed down her strong, alto voice, belief in the power of prayer, and determination to make her own choices. My Grandma June gave me the power of unconditional love, attention to detail, and the example of embodied grace. From her, I hold an affinity for the mountains in my bones, a heart that longs for sage-covered fields, and the delight of a friendly round of competition when playing board games.  One taught me that violence and compassion can inhabit the same spirit.  The other taught me that disease and strength can inhabit the same body. I’ve often compared these two women as polar opposites, models in my life of light and dark, love and fear.  Yet, in an age when women are still neatly tucked into categories and boxes that whittle our humanity into part and parcel, they taught me how to be whole. How to trust my rage as much as my tenderness. When to speak my truth and when listening carries more weight.  My grandmothers taught me that our bodies can only be as free as our minds, that love is medicine but it can’t cure everything, and that no matter how much we try, we can never give another person wings to fly.  Their resilience is the common ground from which my life is nourished, the fertile soil where my roots grow deep and my arms reach high toward the sky, in a song of gratitude. 

In Honor of June Yvonne Fetterhoff Friend 1936-2012

and

Mary Jean Doze Weiss Milot 1938-2024

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