Member-only story
Finding Gratitude In Grief
Some realizations in the wake of my grandmother’s death
It’s been 12 days since my grandma passed away. She was 89 and her death was not unexpected. She’d been very ill for a long time. She’d been telling us for weeks, months even, that she was ready to go. And yet, the news that she was gone was still a shock. We knew it was coming and we knew it was coming within mere days. But the very next morning after this conversation, she was already gone.
Before her passing, I was never able to imagine a world without her in it. No matter how hard I tried, she was always there. Always just a phone call away. Living in the same house she’d lived in not only my entire life, but also my father’s entire life, and most of her own.
It’s been nearly two weeks now that I’ve been living in a world without her, and it doesn’t feel all that different. Which is weird because I feel like it should feel very different. Honestly, I expected the world to just stop spinning when she passed away. I mean, this is my grandma. This is the woman who has always been there, a solid rock that anyone in my family could turn to when they wanted advice or just someone to talk to. And now she’s gone. How can the world keep spinning when she’s gone?
