Sylvia Wynter's Dream

Phone batteries die, trees die, pets die, and even the people we love die. Death is inevitable, yet it is something we can never seem to prepare enough for. Diabetic, heart-broken, old, and needing around the clock care, and still her death shocked me as if though she was a healthy, athletic 17-year-old that got hit by a bus.

It’s been two years since my grandma died, and I want to say that it gets easier, but is it ever easy losing one of your favourite people of all time? My grandma was living with us for a while, but she wanted to go back to her house. One summer night, my mom came to pick me up from work and she told me she took grandma home, and that they hired a caregiver for during the day while my uncle is at work. My uncle called early the next morning and told us that she had died. She was still sleeping when I left for work, and she wasn’t at my house when I got home. I never got the chance to say goodbye.

What I can say happens, though, is that the existing memories are cherished more greatly than they were before. I lost her physical body, but her teachings and stories remain. After my grandma died, I found myself writing about her a lot. I wrote about some of the stories she told me about her life growing up, and I wrote about some things I remember about her. You can read a couple of short stories I wrote about my grandma here. My grandma is the epitome of a Belizean Kriol woman and the best cook ever (I’m not even being biased. My best friend’s little sister only used to eat my grandmother’s rice and beans, and I had a friend in high school who absolutely does not eat jam, but she loved my grandmother’s papaya jam).

I say my grandmother is because I keep her alive through food, too, and I am grateful for the recipes she shared with me. I lost her physically, but I still feel her with me sometimes. This summer, I went to mass in Cancun, Mexico on a Monday morning before my youth group was supposed to fly to Lisbon, Portugal for World Youth Day 2023. After receiving the Holy Eucharist, I felt my grandmother’s present so strongly that I was overcome with joy, and I started crying. I had no idea what was happening at the time, but I enjoyed that sense of closeness, of being with her. Here is an article that I later found that explains what happened.

My family lost the amazing glue that was my grandmother, but hey, maybe God wanted a cool grandma, too.