07/25/2024
My grandmother Gloria died this last week, at 102. I'm so grateful for her, her life, our friendship, and to have been with her when she died.
The eulogy I wrote for her:
We are not born into quiet. All around us lives, ringing like bells, were already going, resounding, crescendoing, reverberating off of each other, and dying down into lingering echoes that sound off of all of us long after the last note was sung. This cacophony, this wild song, as children we take as a given, as what will always be. As a child I heard my father’s ringing end, and only an echo remain, but I can’t say I truly understood then about these bells and their echoes and how these songs intertwine, how they change and affect each other, how each of us ringing our own notes come together in chords, in dissonance, in shattering, and harmony, and how we end up ringing each other, being rung by the past, to echo long into the future.
Later I heard my own child make one brief, resounding gong, then live only ever as a rippling echo. Through my love for him, I learned to listen closely, and hear him still, I hear him now.
When my mother died almost five years ago, a deep note in the song of my life, one that I couldn’t imagine would ever not be there, stopped. It was then that I understood how my life had been ringing with the notes of her song, and how her song was also ringing with the notes of those before and around her. And when her song died out, and her echo began, then I could hear them all, all those deep notes and echoes that I hadn’t ever really listened to or questioned before because they were just always there, laying the foundation for the song of my life. And suddenly not only could I hear them but I cared about them all, and wanted to listen, to know them, and to therefore know myself and my own song, and understand what I was singing into the future. But there is so much I will never know because even as echoes live on after the notes die out, while they keep moving in the world and keep ringing us as they ricochet and bounce back, they cannot say anything new.
In 2020, as the Pandemic disrupted everyone’s lives, our elders especially, I started calling my grandmother every evening, partly to break up the isolation that I knew she was facing, partly because I knew I would never regret a single moment tending that relationship, partly because I knew we both missed my mother and felt we could grieve together, unashamed of our tears–and I understood what it is like to lose a child. But also, I just wanted to understand her song. I wanted to understand how it moved in my mother’s echo, and how it rang out in my own life and now my daughter’s. For over four years we talked every day–even the days I visited her, I’d still call her in the evening, just to say how wonderful it had been to see her. An evening just wasn’t right without her.
My grandmother wasn’t known for her lengthy phone calls, and some days our talks weren’t much more than a couple minutes, a well wish and an “I love you” and an emphatic “I am with you!” But I got pretty good at asking questions and getting her to talk longer–my greatest achievement was well over 20 minutes, but not quite 30. But of course, the longest calls were ones when I was struggling with something and needed an ear and an insight. And while maybe five or ten minutes a day doesn’t seem like much of a relationship, added up over those years, I stand here now feeling like we really did understand each other. I know I got a specific version of her, and I could tell her focus in our relationship was about encouraging and inspiring me, and she didn’t always let me in on her struggles–because she was proud–but occasionally she would, and there were many precious moments especially later on, where she let down her guard and told me about the past that she didn’t like to dwell on–too many sorrowful echoes–or about my mother from her perspective, or me in a context that I could never have understood without her, or events of her life that were potent and meaningful that rang in her still, both painfully and joyfully, and therefore ring in me now.
She was a very wise woman, who keenly understood herself, the mind and body, and was perennially aware that she, and all of us, are always changing, and she had an astonishingly rational and reasonable acceptance of her own changes–though she always needed to test her limits. And she adamantly insisted that I maintain the same level of awareness. I heard her say, nearly every evening, that each day was a gift that we had a duty to enjoy, simply because we were alive, we had a right and a responsibility to joy. And many times, it felt like she crafted the ends of our conversations as if she’d be satisfied if it ended up being the last time we spoke to each other. So it is to start up a friendship with a 98-year-old.
My grandmother was precious to me. I can’t even say how lucky I feel to have had such a friendship. She would have always been my grandmother, but what a gift to have had her as a friend. Our elders are rare jewels and carry more than we can ever know. I loved her, and admired her, and I deeply appreciated the complexity that she carried. She’d been through a lot, came from a lot of hard stories, had many joyful, beautiful moments, and was given the opportunity to make some determined and unlikely choices that still shape the course of our family, and more beyond us.
I think each generation tries to stand in the gap between what we came from and where we hope our children get to be. And she did a remarkable job of standing in the gap that she faced. It’s not that she was perfect and didn’t make mistakes and didn’t have blind spots, the same goes for my mother, and my goodness, me too, and every generation, but she claimed her life and joy in an era of suffering, and sent as many lifelines out to others as she could. She chose to see and pass on the best of where she came from and refused the despair that was swallowing her people whole–all without vilifying the ones who suffered, and so she sang a note of hope that the rest of us have had carrying our tunes for our entire lives. And so because of her, all those people that she loved are still among us, their echoes are still here, shaking the walls and weaving through, and offering grace notes instead of dissonance.
Even if I hadn’t spent these last four years tending to a friendship with my grandmother, her song would still ring in me, and through me, as it does through all of us here, harmonizing and catalyzing, and driving. At this moment, I can hear the last notes from her life fading and this giant, vital, and determined echo beginning to bounce around off of all of us, joining with our own songs, rippling out beyond us and back again.
Because maybe the idea of the individual is nothing but a myth anyway–maybe we are a chorus, rising and falling through time, taking turns carrying the rhythm, the bass notes, and the melody, singing the songs of our ancestors to our children, riffing off of each other and adding in our own miraculous voices, healing the past and the present simultaneously as we try to encourage and inspire and protect the future.
