My search for a sign

How imagination expands in the wake of loss

06/26/2025

My grandmother died this morning. I cried quietly for a minute, then splashed cold water on my face to get ready for a job interview. After it was over, I cleaned vigorously. I wiped down every surface, vacuumed, put trinkets in their places, and replaced dirty towels with clean ones. I sat on the couch and tried to watch a show, but it just wasn’t right. Something I expected to be mindless turned into paranoia, so I turned it off and kept cleaning. I went for a brief walk, tried to call a couple of people, but found that I had much less to say than I anticipated. After exchanging I love yous, I hung up. I walked towards the river, and hunted for signs of my grandmother and grandfather. At the entrance of the park, two bunnies sitting beside one another greeted me. When I reached into my pocket for my phone to take a picture, they separated. I continued my search for signs. It didn’t matter how vague. Two dogs ran around the grass, circling one another. They’d disappeared quickly. I picked a bench, one with a view of the park, the bridge, the dock, the houses across the water. The dogs immediately came to my bench. Just briefly, they sat together, right in front of my feet. They then ran off when called, one a bit before the other. If I could keep finding signs, maybe I could avoid accepting absence. Maybe, my imagination would hold grief in an unrecognizable way. I watch myself exist somewhere between mourning and celebration, between noise and silence, between release and relief. I watch my body and my mind go back and forth between bickering without reason, and holding each other closely. If I never give up my search for signals, will I linger forever in the in between?

My grandparents, Sid and Nancy

I saw her a month ago. My last memories of her are in a rental car in Colorado. We took her out of the nursing home for the afternoon, on a drive. We got her a cotton candy blizzard from Dairy Queen. We played Frank Sinatra loud– she had said his name quietly when we asked who her favorite singer was. She looked at the dash whenever a new song came on. I was in the backseat opposite of her, and I watched her face closely, her hands, my father’s hand resting on top of hers while he steered with the other. I watched her look out the window, and tried to convince myself that the fresh air, the mountains, brought her some sort of joy or warmth, even if she didn’t have the energy to express it. We played Smoke Two Joints by Sublime after Frank stopped singing (and she looked appalled). I continued to read her imaginary mind, to try to summon a laugh that was foreign to me, but resting inside of her.

Her caretakers helped lift her out of the car into her wheelchair, and we said goodbye. I told her that I loved her, and that I would be back soon. That was it.

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My dad and I had spent three days with her, and on the first, we sat in the dining hall with her. It was just the two of us for a second, and she rested her hand on mine, gripping lightly. It startled me at first– my hand usually reached to hers first. Our hands stayed like that until we left the nursing home. When her hand went limp and exhausted, when her fingers lost the bit of strength they had summoned to take my hand, I rested my hand on top of hers. I rubbed my thumb across her thumb, her knuckles, then her palm. She looked at me, nodded, and then shifted her gaze to my father as he returned. I thought of my grandfather’s hand resting on hers, over a decade ago. By holding her hand, I held his too. I had begun grieving her shortly after he died, when her health started to decline in ways I hadn’t noticed before. I had been searching for signs and signals of their togetherness since he passed twelve years ago. I haven’t found many– in my eyes, neither has she. But, they seem to be together everywhere now. I don’t think I’ll ever stop noticing this togetherness, or give up attempts to converse with their absences.

The last time I saw her

We took one afternoon to show her old pictures. Of her when she was young, cigarette in hand, laughing in a way that echoed through the print. Her laugh, what I imagined it to be, survives through me. Maybe, that’s what I’ve taken from her. Or rather, what she has given me. I’m not sure what else in me was rooted in her 90 years, but laughter seems enough. My identity rests in my laughter, and although I never heard her young laugh, I imagine it would be mine.

I have two of my grandmother’s charm bracelets, which she gave me when I was too young to know what to do with them. I asked her what each charm was, or meant, and wrote everything down on scrap paper. I placed the bracelets, along with their folded guides, into my purple jewelry box, and let the silver sit for nearly a decade. Now, the bracelets barely fit, but I continue to squeeze them onto my wrists, even though the little ballerina shoes and the bicycle and the stork catch on everything. Maybe, those moments could serve as reminders. If the laugh she gave me doesn’t feel too tangible some days, charms will do.

How do you memorialize someone? How do you convince yourself that you remember them as well as you’d like to? When we showed my grandmother the pictures, she remembered the names of distant cousins and friends. She lit up, for a few seconds at a time, maybe stepping into the pictures and deriving feeling from them. Knowing that her old soul was, no matter how it presented itself, the same as an even older soul. Maybe, just maybe, the pictures allowed her a glimpse into a life of masquerade parties, of holding her two children and their grandchildren, of love– all of which are stored in parts of her, all of which are confirmed by disintegrating, grayish pictures. A life she is now fully immersed in. A life that, once again, is all hers.

Nancy

As always, thank you for reading. Looking forward to next time

- Bela