At the moment that I get the text from Dad that my grandma has died, I am recording one of my newsletters into audio for my other grandma. These simultaneous communications on one device are jarring, but I don’t stop dictating. Grandma Pat was read her last rites two days ago, and I planned to stand by her bed and say goodbye, but I did not make it. I can’t pinpoint the last time I saw her alive. There is a photo of it somewhere. She made it a point to get pictures with everyone when she was still well enough to show up at holiday gatherings. We would make formations around her for the camera. First the five sons, now the ten grandkids, now the great-grandkids.
Her funeral marks the last time she gets my sisters and me into the Santa Clara Chapel. She was a Catholic school teacher who had her retirement party at a convent, so earnest while singing hymns. She wanted us to be Catholics with her. I have this memory of being picked up from Grandma Carol’s and brought to church by Grandma Pat. We were waiting for that white Cadillac to take us to the chapel. It was always such a monumental chore to put on shoes back then, especially if those shoes were meant to walk us into church. Mom was harping on us to brush our hair.
I said, “Why do I have to brush my hair? God doesn’t care if I brush my hair.”
“God doesn’t, but your Grandma Pat does,” Grandma Carol said. I was jealous that she and Mom got to stay home on Sunday morning and not put on shoes or brush their hair or go to church.
It stuck in my brain, “God doesn’t care, but your Grandma Pat does.”
I used to think about God in the shower. In the early mornings before school, I knew he was watching me get naked. He was the only one who knew the exact number of hairs on my head. I wanted to ask him how many there were. How many times have I said the word, “the?” How many steps have I taken? I was fascinated by this idea of God’s immense knowledge of me. No wonder I became so addicted to my smart phone.
At the funeral, I’m in the pew next to Carla, my mom’s wife, who was raised in a southern baptist church and likes to point out the silliness of a Catholic service. I’m trying to behave the way Grandma would have wanted. It’s the first time since I got that text that I feel connected to Grandma’s death—to pray on my knees, to speak of the fruit of Mary’s womb. That’s a direct connection to Grandma. I can see all five of her sons in the pews in front of me and imagine them as little boys who’ve lost their mom. There is a woman in the front pew whose body shakes with her sobs. I don’t know who she is or how she knew Grandma Pat. Her display of emotion makes me feel like an imposter at the funeral. I should be crying harder. My tears are piddling.
Eat his body. Drink his blood.
Church gives Carla the Heebie Jeebies, but my mom, sisters and I come into the prayers like they’re an old home. The familiar prayers soothe. They aren’t about feeling. They’re about ritual. I know the words. I know when to sit, stand, and kneel, and when to hang back in my seat while the real Catholics line up for their crackers—the body of Christ. The whole thing is deliciously goth. At one point in the service, I make an effort to count the number of times the priest mentions blood.
My Uncle Bill, the youngest of the brothers, reads the words he wrote about Grandma’s life. I discover that she was a concert violinist and a basketball coach. He tells how Grandpa used to say that the tires on her car never cooled down. After the service, I ask each of my parents to tell me a story about Grandma that I might not know. Mom tells me about this time a colleague of Grandpa’s came to visit the house, looked around, and asked if his wife had passed. It was missing that feminine touch that a wife was expected to bring into the home. After this incident, my grandparents bought new furnishings to make the place nicer and curb any further embarrassment. My Uncle Mike responded to this change by gluing all the furniture to the ceiling, including dishes on the table, everything hanging upside-down as a big “nope.”
Five boys. I never really thought about how it must have been until I heard the story of the upside-down furniture and the hot tires of her car. She loved her sons. Grandma bought me my first laptop when I started taking college classes as a single mom. She valued education, served on the board of the Mesa Union School district, and, along with everyone else, wanted me to be a writer.
Her white Cadillac had power windows. Our parents’ cars had the old crank kind, so she had to tell us not to play with the buttons. She struggled with her weight but also swam laps in the open ocean. There were times when Grandma took us on long walks around the Esplanade Mall. There was this curious early morning thing that happened there. Old people would stroll or speed-walk as though they were on a track. I wonder if she thought we needed exercise. We just probably needed a babysitter. I would think that having three granddaughters after decades of raising boys would be divine.
One time she took us to Fantastic Sam’s without giving our mom any kind of warning. My hair had been down to my waist, and we had it chopped to my shoulders. Jessica got this perm that was only the front of her hair, which was also cut shorter than the rest, so it was a fro in front with long straight hair down the back.
Mom was not pleased, but I get it. All those boys with their stench and their male energy. Served the sons right to keep having daughters. Dad had three girls and then Michael had three girls and then Robert was gifted a stepdaughter and then another girl. When Gerard finally had a son, our grandparents gave him a monetary reward—I see it as a consolation prize. I would have needed consolation if I found out I was having a boy. We aren’t allowed to care about gender; I know. Gender is over, but all I wanted was a little girl.
In a way, we were Grandma’s project. She signed us up for catechism classes at her church, where we would learn about Jesus. We dropped out and were never baptized. I remember the profound relief of telling Mom that we didn’t want to go anymore, and her just saying, “okay.” We weren’t activities kids like the kids today. With no sports or hobbies to attend after school, we either played pretend or watched TV.
I was scared that Grandma wouldn’t approve of what I wanted to write. My stories were going to have sin and cussing. I didn’t want her to find out I didn’t believe in Jesus and probably not even God. I tried to read the bible multiple times, but the story was bland and regardless of what fantastical events took place, I couldn’t really get into the characters. They had no meat.
Eat his body. Drink his blood.
Grandma is in an urn at the altar. Cremation used to be forbidden to Catholics because the soul needs the body to rise out of the grave. The ghoulishness is spectacular. Cremation is not allowed, just like birth control. Imagine I was fully Catholic and just let myself keep having babies. Imagine I was baptized and joined the choir and confessed my sins to a priest. Grandpa didn’t go to church except for his son’s weddings and the occasional baptism. He mostly sat in his lazy boy chair drinking Bud Light. The wheels on his truck disintegrated from old age.
I almost stopped writing this year. Spent a sleepless night, tossing and turning, wondering if it was all worth it. Someone I wrote about confronted me about their appearance in one of my essays, and told me I was “weird” for writing and posting it on the internet. I laid awake thinking, what am I doing? Is this whole thing a huge mistake? How do you write about people you love for the consumption of others? Am I exploiting my family? Am I exploiting everyone? Should I scrap it and write anonymously where no one I know can find it? Would that be the benevolent thing to do?
Eat his body. Drink his blood.
My sisters and our families and I eat tacos at Taqueria Cuernavaca in between the mass and the burial. We lose track of time and arrive at the cemetery late-while everyone is singing “Happy Birthday.” I’m confused at first about why they are doing that. Whose birthday is it? Who is trying to get attention at my grandma’s funeral? As I sidle up next to her, my mom tells me it’s Grandma’s birthday today. I didn’t realize. How poetic. I know almost nothing about her. I know what my mom and dad and uncles tell me, but nothing below the surface. We take turns throwing roses on top of her urn at the cemetery. Her second husband watches as her remains are buried next to her first.
It’s a very different thing these two sides of the family. Dad’s was a patriarchy where the boys ran the show. I imagine them running circles around Grandma hooting and hollering, chasing her to the car on which the tires never cooled. Do sons think about the inner lives of their mothers?
I feel regret at Grandma’s funeral for not asking her more questions, while she was still coherent enough to give me the answers. Not everyone wants everyone to know everything, though. It’s the struggle I have. People are determined to live a private life. “Private life,” it sets off alarm bells in my head. What are you hiding? Who are you hiding from? Do you think you’re special—that no one else has done what you do, that no one would understand why you are how you are?
At the funeral afterparty, my dad tells my single cousin that she needs to find a Pisces, because they are just like, “go with the flow.” I feel like I’m in some kind of alternate universe. Suddenly, my dad knows and cares about how people’s astrological signs relate to one another? What else do I not know about Dad?
Trish tells me this story on the way home about how when she was little, she had such a bad case of pink-eye that the amount of lashes she lost during attempts to unseal her lids alarmed her. My dad was asleep on the couch, so she scooted up close to his face and began to count his eyelashes. To get a number for comparison—to be sure that she didn’t lose too many of her own.
This is the moment of the day when I cry the hardest, when I’m laughing at the image of my dad waking up to my little sister so close to his face and him asking, “What are you doing?”
“Nothing,” she said, embarrassed that she got caught counting his hairs.
I think God wants us all to stay curious. More than He wants us to go to church. More than He wants us to read the Bible. That’s my belief, anyway.
And those questions you asked yourself in the middle of the night - the same sorts of ones float to me, too. It’s hard and sticky writing about our experiences with our people. And then letting others, who don’t know our people, read our words. It pushes up against something inside. Keep doing it, though. Because imagine if all writers censored their stories/ held back for the sake of others. God wouldn’t want that 😉