I keep circling back to the anniversary of Grandmom Willey, to January 18, 2025, and the fact that a whole year can pass without it feeling “done.” Last year, when she died, it was a cold and snowy weekend. This year, it is mid-January again, and I can’t help noticing the echo. The weather is a fickle thing these days, though. Some January days are bitter, some are strangely mild, and some feel like the season is shrugging. Still, the similarities between this year and last are not lost on me.
Hemming corduroy with Grandmom’s things
The other day, my parents stopped by. They brought donations for 3B Brae’s Brown Bags from my Aunt Mares and homemade pasta from my Aunt Bobbie. It was one of those ordinary, loving exchanges that would have been completely unremarkable in my family, except nothing feels completely unremarkable anymore.
When they walked in, I was helping Grace hem her new pants. We had Grandmom’s old sewing stuff out. Her fabric scissors. Her thread. Her ruler. The whole little collection of tools that used to live in her house, in her rhythm, in her hands.
Grace did the hard work. She had never hemmed pants before, and the pants were corduroy, which feels like the universe’s way of saying, “Let’s make this interesting.” It was tough, but she stayed with it. They turned out really well.
And there it was. Grandmom Willey’s navy blue thread, running through new seams in my house, on my table, on a day that was not supposed to be about grief, and somehow was.
It felt good. Not in a “fixed” way. In a grounded way. Like my chest could unclench for a second.
The part where I still don’t feel like I have done grief correctly
It has been a year, and I still don’t feel like I have properly mourned her. Then I immediately argue with myself, because what does properly even mean? Who is grading this?
Even now, I’m wiping my face while I write, annoyed at myself for being weepy. I miss her, and then I get mad that I miss her like this. It is not a flattering cycle. It is just a real one.
Grandmom used to say that even if you can’t run, even if you can’t walk, then you crawl. You keep going. You don’t give up.
I think about that a lot. I don’t always practice it, but I think about it.
I also wonder something I did not let myself wonder last year. Would she be okay with me not moving for a minute? Would she be okay with me sitting still on some days? With pausing.
I want to believe she would. I want to believe she would see the difference between giving up and catching my breath.
Thinking about my parents, and not knowing what to say
I worry about my parents in a way I can’t neatly wrap up.
They lived next door to my grandparents, almost my entire life. That kind of closeness becomes its own language. It is coffee and driveways, check-ins and routines, ordinary days that add up to a whole life. Then, when someone is suddenly gone, all those ordinary days turn into a silence you can actually feel.
I don’t know exactly how they are coping. I don’t know what January 18 feels like in their bodies. I hope they are being there for each other. I hope they know it is okay to cry. I hope they know it is okay to pause.
It doesn’t make anyone ungrateful. It doesn’t erase the love. If anything, it proves it.
When they stood in my kitchen with donation bags and pasta, while Grandmom’s scissors sat open on my table, I felt this strange mix of comfort and ache. Like love was present, and so was absence, and neither one was leaving.
Where I keep finding her
Growing up in a big Italian family meant Sunday dinners. It meant handmade spaghetti, gravy on bread with fresh-grated Pecorino cheese, stories and laughter, football games in the cornfield across the street, and egg hunts that were never calm.
Grandmom and Grandpop were the center of that world. I didn’t understand how much they held until they weren’t here to hold it anymore.
Now the house we gathered in isn’t the same. It’s active and cared for, and my Aunt Bobbie and Uncle Stump have made it their own. I’m grateful for that. It’s just hard to hold the before and the after in the same place. Even with the changes, Grandmom is still in the things. Not in a spooky way. In a practical way. In a love-left-footprints way.
She’s in navy blue thread.
She’s in a pair of corduroy pants that will outlast all washes and stumbles because they were sewn carefully.
She’s in homemade pasta on my counter, because Aunt Bobbie made it, and Grandmom taught her.
She’s in the fact that my parents still show up with their hands full, giving. Including 3B donations from Aunt Mares, knowing Grandmom always loved helping pack 3B bags.
Here is the thing. I think love doesn’t vanish. It just changes its address.
A year later, this is what I can say without forcing it
I don’t have a tidy ending for this. I don’t have a lesson that makes it hurt less. I have a table with sewing tools on it, Grace wrestling corduroy into a straight line, and a spool of navy thread that made me cry in the most inconvenient moment.
Maybe that is the closest thing to an answer I get this year.
I loved her. I still love her. I miss her. I am still learning how to carry that without rushing myself, and without scolding myself for being human.
If you’re reading this because you miss someone, too, I hope you get one small moment of steadiness. Something ordinary that suddenly feels like a hand on your shoulder. Something that reminds you that love does not disappear. Sometimes it just shows up as thread.
Soooo beautiful!
My grandmother died January 16th 2016. We went out to brunch today with my mom and sister and talked about her quite a bit. We still miss Hazel a lot. She had so very many unique sayings and quirks. In her older age she would say things that would be offensive but from an older woman you would just laugh. Nothing horrible but when I had my hair long she said I looked like the Geico cavemen. She would say things if you made a dumb mistake like “we all cant be smart”. To her they were truthful observations. Not cruel or mean. Just her interpretation of things. She was the most unintentionally funny person I knew.
She also could be brutally honest to a point that could appear cruel to some people but I never took it that way because it was never meant to be malicious.
She did a lot of remarkable things in her life. Some of the things I’m most proud of were things that got little fanfare. Like her giving a ride to a black nurse to the hospital when none of the other nurses would pick her up simply because she was black in the 60’s. She taught me to sew when I was a kid even though my father scolded her for doing so. She supported gay marriage because she said “what does it matter to me if people love each other?”
She taught me so very many things. We would sit around the table in the kitchen and play rummy or another card game. She happily was the subject of a paper I wrote in college when I needed someone to interview about their life who was a senior citizen.
She kept a daily tally of her weight. Always wanting to be 123 pounds exactly. Her wedding weight. She’d say things about other people that she didn’t intend to be mean but could be taken that way. We still miss her every day though. My mom and I talk about her on my daily call to her almost every week. If my mom misplaces something I’ll say you know grandmom would tell you “a place for everything and everything in its place”.
There is no timetable for grieving. Even if it seems unreasonable to someone else you’re not working on anyone else’s schedule. There’s no handbook or proper procedure to follow. Life is hard enough without being hard on ourselves more than we already are. As you said “don’t scold yourself for being human”. At some point you’ll look back fondly of memories of the person and laugh about some of the things and although you’ll miss them you’ll find joy in the memories. Just because you’re not there yet it doesn’t matter. No one can (or should) judge you on it including yourself.