A Normal Little Life: Contemplating My Grandma

The worst day of my life was the day I found out my grandma had cancer. We didn’t know it was cancer yet, just a giant mass in her stomach. We were at the lake house, and everything felt so still. Normally the stillness of the lake brings me a much-needed serenity, but not that day. The silence felt like a heavy hand landing on my shoulder. My mind was an empty void with the diagnosis echoing endlessly–we didn’t know if there was even a chance of survival. Which I later realized terrified me so much because my grandma is a normal woman. She is not going to be memorialized in stone or have banquets in her honor. She lives in suburbia and knits for her grandchildren. She’s normal with a normal little life which can so easily become forgotten.

At first, this realization hit me like a bullet lodged in my throat. Not moving but stuck there—the pain of its truth constant. I thought my grandma was going to disappear along with her body. That she’d be left as an offhanded statement when someone sees her in an old yearbook. “Oh and there’s Lynda, it’s too bad she’s gone,” and then they’d flip the page. Life feels so meaningless when you come to such a realization. Every moment in her life will be forgotten including the grand moments she cherished, her wedding and her husband's death, will slip away into nothing. There’s a part in the Disney movie Coco where they travel to the part of the underworld where forgotten souls go. It’s a desolate wasteland with everyone living like the homeless until they eventually fade away. The thought of my grandmother in such a place, with her bright yellow soul, broke something in me.

And then, on a random Tuesday in August, an overcast evening with a light warm wind, I went for a walk. The ripple of the trees along the path hauled me back to that day on the lake. To the smothering weight of my grandma's teetering life. For the rest of my walk, I thought of my grandma. Of the mystery books she loves and her constant care of everyone around her. Of how every time I put on a coat, she would check if it was covering my bum before letting me leave the house. How every Santa Claus reminds me of the one that asked my grandma on a date. How every time a red squirrel crosses my path, I think of her burning hatred for them and how no matter how many times I eat roast beef, none has ever beaten hers. This moment, just remembering my grandmother and her grand existence in my life, brought me a realization. The world will not tremble in my grandmother's wake, but I will. I will tremble for as long as I can. There's a certain beauty in that. Her soul is left in the hands of those she loved and them alone. There’s peace in knowing her life can end without conspiracy theories or hate comments. That she will die one day and be remembered as the loving woman, mother, and grandmother she was. She doesn’t need to be more to matter in this world. The people she loved will spend their lives finding her in the small moments. In the vibrant color of a dress or the warmth given by a wool scarf on a crisp January night. I do not have to be sad that the world won’t know what they lost, because they don’t need to. I’ll hold her memory. I’ll keep it in my pocket, safe and warm.

Throughout the days since I’ve found that this epiphany of mine extends farther than I knew. Everyone around me is normal. I am normal. What I’d forgotten about the movie Coco was that its characters don’t remain in this forgotten part of the underworld. The characters do not become forgotten. They continued to be remembered for the impact they made on those who remained alive. In the movie, the grandmother, an old woman with a very quickly fading memory, remembers her father through the song he used to sing her. The grandmother’s cherished memories made her tremble in her father's wake, despite his blatant normality.

Everyone is loved by someone. Everyone is remembered by someone. Every normal person with their normal hobbies and normal house is going to be found in the normal things they loved on earth, even long after they’re gone.

Yes, my grandma’s life is in a precarious position. But personally, I think her life has been rather successful because she will leave this earth loved, whenever she does decide to say goodbye. She is not going to become forgotten. Her soul remains in the love she taught everyone around her. That’s the important thing in life, whether it is done in normalcy or in fame. No, she won’t get a statue or a memorial concert, but I will remember her in all the normal subtleties around me in my, like my grandma's, normal little life.