3/19/25

I don't know what to say at my grandmother funeral

TW listed at the bottom

My grandmother's funeral is this Saturday. I have no idea what to say. I want to remember her, to immortalize who she was to me. I am so afraid I am going to forget her, and she will be gone forever, and the facts of who she was and what she was like will be erased from me. Washed away like writing in the beach sand.

She was this hummingbird of a woman. She always reminded me of one. She is the most aggressively Christian person I have ever seen. I’m pretty sure she was a flat earther. She was nice, though. Aggressively nice. She would thank janitors for keeping stores clean. One time, a store employee was nice to her, and she said, “You must be a Christian,” and he told her he was a Satanist, and she didn’t know how to respond, but she stopped saying that.

She had an eating disorder. She ate the same breakfast for as long as I was alive, a little oatmeal with cinnamon sugar and a glass of milk. She weighed 82 pounds; she was too small to donate blood. You could feel her ribs through her two sweaters when you hugged her. One time, she bought a christening dress from Goodwill, the type meant for babies, and it didn’t fit her because she was too small.

She wore curlers in her hair at night. She died in them. She was brain dead before they got to the hospital, but it took a few days to get the kind of death you can fill out on paperwork. That was the only time I saw her with her hair uncurled. She used to compliment me on my curly hair all the time. She said that she was pin straight. I liked her hair.

Every time I called her, she would drop everything to talk to me, for hours. She would ask as many questions as she could, and she would listen enthusiastically. I was always excited to talk to her with good news. A lot of people were. They are putting the funeral on YouTube because she knew so many people. She had a double-sided Rolodex of Christmas card photos to pray for, along with their photos, and every time my papa would say, “Oh, those are the Johnsons who are serving in Turkey,” or “Oh, those are the Smiths who are in California but used to be in Maine.” I was always surprised at how they always knew their names. They always had people calling them. They didn’t pick up and instead let it always go to the answering machine so if they were tired, they could pretend they were out of the house, but they said it was to prevent scammers. I’m sure that was part of it.

She had the worst anxiety and would worry so much about everything. I got hit by a car and I didn’t tell her. She found out two years later. She thanked me for not telling her. Every time something bad happened, she had to figure out how it wasn’t God being mad at her before she could move forward. She complimented me once on how every time I had a problem, I would blaze forth and find solutions so quickly, and how she couldn’t do that. She gave the best compliments.

I miss her. She was kind, and she loved me, and she would probably think I was going to hell if I didn’t lie to her so much.

She had no idea who I am, what I like, what kind of shows I watch. She found out my name by accident. I didn’t tell her, but the my college did when I forward an email without thinking. She thought it was a nickname instead of a trans name. She loved a version of me that doesn’t exist. She will never know me. Thank fucking God. Because I don’t think I could disappoint her, and I don’t think I can be a person she approves of.

I want to remember her. I want to be kind like her. I want to acknowledge her good parts and ignore the bad ones, and I want to talk to her again. And tell her about that girl from Ukraine I’m teaching English to because she was from Ukraine and got so happy when you mentioned it. I want to tell her about my last trip, and how my sister got to come. I want to tell her I love her, and I want to feel annoyed that she keeps telling me how God is going to fix everything. I wish I could be annoyed at her again. I don’t know how to have a Christmas or an Easter that is plagued by her terrible cooking.

All things considered, I think the world was a better place with her in it. And I think it’s going to be really goddamn hard to try and fill her shoes.

tw, death, relgion, swearing, complicated relgions with family, eating disorder,anxiety, car accident, anti-queerness, relgiousness