Heal from Grief
“And the tears come streaming down your face/When you lose something you cannot replace/When you love someone, but it goes to waste/Could it be worse?”
In “Fix You,” Chris Martin wallows about the reality of grief. When love is not enough to save, when what is lost is irreplaceable, he rhetorically questions, “Could it be worse?” The audience knows, like brooding Hamlet, the answer is “no.” Grief is one of the most complex of emotions because of its frenemy-esque connection to the other emotional juggernaut: guilt. When my mom drops off a purple half fake fur and half lace jacket that looks like something someone twice my age might have worn because it was my grandmother’s, the guilt holds my face from squinting and my tongue from moving, “I don’t want this. I’ll never wear it.” Then underneath, the over-analytical thoughts soaked in guilt begin to ooze in, “Keep it. It was your grandmother’s. You should have it. Maybe you’ll wear it? You’ll look like a jerk if you give it back.” Believe me, as a recovering Catholic and consequential victim of Catholic “guilties,” these feelings and thoughts never subside. Grief exacerbates them; it opens and picks at the wound. The other keepsakes came in the form of a rosary, costume jewelry, a glass box with dried flowers pressed into the lid, a laminated picture of Jesus, a music box with a colorful painting of the Virgen de Guadalupe on the lid, diary entries about how she felt on the day of my wedding and when she met her first great-grandchild (my oldest son), an antique lapel watch that belonged to my great-grandmother, and various baubles to include a pearl cocktail ring which fits my middle finger perfectly. When I wear it, I feel comfort, like it’s a gossamer lifeline pulling me out of grief and straight to her presence.
My grief strikes in abrupt waves. It was Joan Didion who wrote about this happening to her after her husband passed. His shoes sitting by the door waiting for their owner were items of his she could not part with. I’ll be sitting at a stoplight, and in the middle of the dead quiet of the stop and click-clack, click-clack of the car’s turn blinker, I’ll hear my grandmother’s voice: “Right, Chaz?!” or “Not too shabby!” or “Whaddya think?” or “Boy, that’ll do it!” or “You’re HOW OLD?” “That’s old!” She passed away in February of this year at the age of 101. After my grandpa’s death in 2014, her dementia grew; she spent the last years of her life in an assisted living facility in the Memory Care unit. There, she would get her hair coiffed and nails manicured every week, go on group outings in “the van,” play cards, do art projects, and arrange fake flowers, something she really loved. A conversation with her would sound like this:
“How old are you now?”
“Ooof, I’m old. 45.”
“45! That’s old! Do you have kids?”
“I have three sons.”
“THREE sons?! Oh my.”
“Yep. Three sons. They keep me busy.”
“How old are you now?”
“Oof, I’m old. 45.”
And over tea, stale nursing home cookies, and The Ellen Show, we would go around and around. She would remember me when I was in front of her, but she did not remember my visits because she also used to tell me she was lonely and no one came to visit her. Though, my mom used to visit her every other day. Grandma, or as we called her Gma Dini, loved playing Old Maid with my sons, and she especially loved my oldest son’s thick, curly red hair because her father, who died when she was 16, was a redhead.
The loveliest of people, known as the finest girl in town, Gma Dini taught me the meaning of “todo to match” and how important it is to always demonstrate grace, even if I was never the best at it. We had a deep, natural bond. She always knew what I was thinking and, with unconditional love, tolerated me when I used to get mad about giving up my room when she and grandpa would visit, a la Sam in Sixteen Candles, or when teenaged me would get annoyed about sitting in the back of the car with her while driving the backroads of Southern Arizona, my mom blasting Raul DiBlasio on repeat…”Laaaaa Biiikkiiinnna.”
When we would visit the brick house on Briggs St., where my mom and her three siblings grew up, we would plan our adventures “across the line” to browse through colorful, cheap “taka takas” and eat mochomos at La Roca. I learned how to say “U.S. Citizen” with authority to the ominous border patrol agents while driving back into the United States, to buy a fake Louis Vuitton, every color of Chiclet tasted the same, and to repeat “No Gracias,” a necessary art. I loved sitting and listening, as a kid, in the no-kid-allowed living room, to the grownups talking back and forth up and over Spanish and English with Chuck Mangione’s trumpet in the background. The mere permission made me feel important, privileged. When we visited the duplex my great-grandmother, Enriqueta Gonzalez (Gammy), owned with metal rocking chairs on the porch, I learned I came from a family of strong, industrious women. Enriqueta was a seamstress, jail matron, cemetery worker, insurance agent and landlord. Her sister was the first female appointed Consul of Mexico and the head of the Mexican Consulate office in Nogales. We called them the Bobbsey Twins. When they were alive, they were also part of our adventures. In their old house with creaky floors, the Bobbseys would see me peeking out from behind my mom and grandma then immediately go to pinch my fat, freckled cheeks singing, “Ayyyy, que hermosa! Eres muuuuyyyyy boniiiiita!”
Over the years, my grandma gave me my first manicure because she was horrified by my nail-bitten nubs, and, often, her Clinique gifts with a purchase or P with a P. I loved the red and magenta lipsticks. From her, I’m pretty sure I inherited my quirky (some would say weird; others would say witty) sense of humor and my love of holiday decorations, shopping for deals, and fashion. Many a Spring Break I spent at her kitchen table catching up, her in her robe and slippers telling me I needed to eat something for breakfast. She loved to play “This Little Piggy” with my boys, squealing with them when the piggy would “run” all the way home, and when she would see someone wearing sweatpants at the grocery store she would exclaim with displeasure, “Que Varvaro!” (How barbaric!). One time, she let me drive her Lexus on the freeway to Rio Rico from Tubac and told me to go a little faster. Easters, Christmas Eves, high school graduation, college graduation, anniversaries, weddings, babies…she was there. When I would leave from a visit, she always made sure to tell me, “I love you sweetheart, so much,” even when her memory started to decline. Covid-19 prevented us from seeing her when she turned 100, but when she turned 95, we had a huge fiesta for her. I made a movie about her life and her family of four children, nine grandchildren, and eleven great-grandchildren which included clips from an oral history interview I asked her to do years prior and some of her favorite music from Herb Alpert, Gypsy Kings, Vincente Fernández João Gilberto, and Luis Miguel.
Her fierce love for her family, a grandparent’s “wild love” as one of my friends called it, would show in the way she would look at all of us, and in her daily diary. I used to say if everyone looked at me the way she did, my life would be alright or “Not too shabby!” When she found out I was having a baby, she wrote, “She’s having a Baby! I can hardly believe this! Am so happy for them at last a great grand child hope I live to see him or her.” When he was born, she was elated, “I was so thrilled I thought I would burst with happiness.” Finally meeting him, she wrote “I got to give him his bottle what an immense pleasure to hold him. I feel such a tremendous love for him!” When I had my middle son, he had many challenges, and in a world where everyone may treat him differently for them, she never did. By the time I had my third son, her dementia was beginning to affect her memory, so she would comment on how handsome he was, but she would always ask, “Who does he belong to?”
When Hospice handed my mom and aunt a blue booklet titled Gone from My Sight: The Dying Experience, we knew death would be arriving soon. They called it “decline.” As Gma’s body started to shut down, she was in extreme pain. The hospice nurse said it was part of the process; death is painful. Literally. The morphine subdued it and her. On one of my last visits, I brought her flowers and gently sat next to her, afraid somehow my body weight would impact her breathing. Her eyes were closed, so I did not know if she would feel me there. Within seconds, she sat up for the first time, opened her eyes, looked at me like I sparkled, the way only she could, and slowly said, “Thank you.” My aunt said they were the first words she said to anyone that day. Eventually, within the next week, she stopped opening her eyes, and as she was leaving her body, her breathing became labored, and her face and mouth changed the way they do as the body stops. In my visits with her, I told her I loved her. I thanked her for everything, and I sobbed.
Her funeral took place at Sacred Heart Church, the same place she married my grandfather as an Armistice Day bride on November 11, 1943. She was buried holding a rosary, in a rose-pink colored casket adorned with the Virgen de Guadalupe next to my grandfather. My oldest son was a pallbearer and overcome with emotion as he put on his white gloves. At the burial, we all took turns sprinkling dirt on her coffin and a layer of long-stem pink roses. The youngest two great-grandchildren lingered, overlooking the opening in the earth, at the end asking questions about what happens to all of it. The cycle of life. To me, her loss means the end of the line. She was the last grandparent, and the last tangible connection to childhood memories that branded my Mexican heritage into my veins, my being. In one of my favorite pictures of her, she is a young, vibrant woman adorned with necklaces and bracelets and a flamenco skirt in pink heels dancing with glee. In another, she is in a wheelchair with her hair and nails done, and I’m crouched next to her. We are laughing hysterically because right before my dad took the picture, she whispered to me, “I have my eye on you.” She was always full of zingers.
Right now, she and my grandpa are dancing away and probably singing while waving their hands, “Happy Days are here again…!” like they used to in the driveway as a joke when we would leave their house. With her loss, I didn’t go through the five stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. I’m feeling acceptance, likely because I had time to say goodbye and was fortunate to know her for my lifetime. Though the process of her death created space to reflect on my own mortality, my faith, my relationships with my family, my heritage, my legacy, and what I will continue to value, my heart physically feels like there is a tear, a rip, a void because she is no longer there to receive an apology or gift, and she is something I cannot replace.
OneRadMama 