Remembrance

In my family when one of us dies it is customary for us to throw a celebration of how that person lived, and how we should remember them, it gives us one last goodbye. This is a story about how my family and I remembered my grandmother after she died and how I dealt with it.

I was young when my grandmother first started getting sick so I didn’t have much time with her but I can still remember the way she would always make me laugh and the way she smiled every time my dad brought my sister and me to see her. I remember one time I was over at my grandmother’s house, I was playing outside like kids do and I was climbing in a tree she had told me not to climb in. I fell out of the tree and put a massive hole in a shirt she had just bought me I figured she would be mad at me so I avoided going inside for the rest of the day until it was time for dinner. So I finally went inside to face my grandmother in my ruined shirt, she looked at me and instead of being mad, she asked if that was why I was avoiding her the whole day and laughed. After I got cleaned up for dinner I asked her why she laughed, she told me that my father once did the same thing but he ripped a new pair of jeans too, which kind of made me laugh. I was about 8 when she was diagnosed with dementia, the following years were tough I watched the once joyful eyes turn cold and confused. Then 3 years after she was diagnosed she was gone.

Her passing hit me hard, this was the first time I had experienced real loss and I didn’t know how to deal with it. so I went outside and did something I loved doing, I climbed a tree and I ripped a hole in my shirt at least this one wasn’t new. it made me remember that day and how nice of a person she was, so I sat at the top of that tree for a while watching the birds fly around, and the squirrels jump from tree to tree. once I finally came down from the tree I felt better because all I could think about was that damn shirt. About a week after she passed we had the funeral, then it was time to plan the celebration. It was another week until the celebration but this one needed some preparation because we were having a bonfire. we got some trees we had cut down the year before and cut them up into sections. We staked them in a pile and lit it around noon. We all went around saying our last goodbye, telling stories, and telling jokes it helped lighten the mood. The fire went on till about midnight then everyone went home and then it was time to go back to everyday life. She still crosses my mind every now and again it makes me smile as I keep moving through life.

That’s all I got for Remembrance the key takeaway from this would be jokes and laughter are the most helpful ways to remember someone.

“family cemetery” by paparutzi is licensed under CC BY 2.0.

“Fire” by Jomme V is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.