My grandmother is still with us, but her health continues to worsen. She’s had some OK days, but the last couple of days have brought a more significant decline. I’m starting to expect the phone to ring any minute. I’ve constructed ways to detach myself from that inevitable moment. I realize I’m pretty good at walling things off. When I drop those defenses, I start to lose it. I guess I’m the kind of person who has to grieve a bit at a time.
Between scrambling to finish work projects that have about sent me over the edge to dealing with snow and snow days (and the resulting craziness that comes from everyone being off schedule), I’ve had plenty of opportunities to wrap myself in other things. Even when life is really busy, I normally still try to write or read something or reflect about life or do something that grounds me. Now all I want to do is zone out and forget about the clouds hanging over us.
I’ve assumed the responsibility of writing my grandmother’s obituary and funeral bulletin. Writing usually comes easy to me. This feels more like climbing Mount Everest. I stare at the blank screen and feel paralyzed, but I know if I wait until after, I won’t be able to do it at all. I try to do the less emotional parts like listing surviving relatives just to make some progress. When I get into more complicated details like colors and pictures and design, my brain just shuts down. It’s taken me days just to be able to sit down and write a blog post.
The most important part to me is that I don’t want to write some dry account of her life. It’s not like we get to publish a small novel in the paper, but it needs to say something worthy of her. In addition to the factual details that go into obituaries and funeral bulletins, you do get room for a paragraph or two to summarize someone’s life. But this is not just any someone; this is the someone who has kept all the mismatched parts of our lives woven together since the day we were born.
A year or two ago, somebody turned the idea of six-word stories into a popular phenomenon. The idea is to try to tell an entire story in six words. It sounds impossible, but I’ve read some fantastic ones. (Samples here via Wired and here at the Six Word Stories site) Then came the natural extension of that – six-word memoirs. (the Smith Magazine project and illustrated ones at NPR) The suggestion I read: write the six-word story of the person’s life and let that guide how you write their obituary.
This certainly isn’t easy either, but there is something more focused and less daunting about it. You can’t encapsulate an entire life this way, of course, especially not one full of rich stories that touches countless people. It does, though, let you capture one particular theme or characteristic or truth about someone that can speak to the whole of their lives. In a world full of words and noise, perhaps this is the path to speaking simply and clearly to what’s most essential and fundamental about someone and what they stood for.
So while I sit down this evening to reflect on that for my grandmother, I encourage you to try it out for yourself and your kids. Thinking about your life, what would your six-word story be? What would it be for your kids? What about just something that happened today? What about six words about autism?
Posts that hopefully are similar:
- Beginning to Rebuild
- Grandmother
- The 439 Stages of Grief
- Diagnosis Day
- Diagnosis Day – 2nd Anniversary Edition
- What Christmas Means to Me This Year
- Autism and Tornado Preparedness – A Crash Course
{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
I’m so sorry about your grandmother. I lost my 90-year old grandfather 2 weeks ago and had just made it to Massachusetts to be with them 48 hours before. After he died, I dropped everything to spend the rest of the week there with my grandmother and, like you, worked on the obituary, finding a photo for the paper, and well, everything else that was necessary to put the funeral together, actually. I guess that, like you, I grieve a little at a time, because reading this post allowed another burst of my own grief to leak out. Thank you for writing this and I’m sorry that you’re having to prepare yourself for this loss.
Lovely idea, Tim … I’ve been giving the six words for autism and our family some thought and came up with “We are all on a spectrum.” Whether it’s autism or “normalcy,” happiness or loneliness, life can be graphed on any number of spectrums. Autism is just one of them.
Hang in there. I know that your words will do your grandmother very proud.
@Jordan – Thank you for sharing your story. I’m sorry for your loss as well. I find some comfort in sharing this grief with others like you who understand, though I wish none of us had to go through this. Though I guess the only way to avoid such grief is to not have people we love so much in our lives, but that is infinitely more intolerable to even think about.
I am content with how the obituary, funeral bulletin, and slideshow turned out. I know how often she read and re-read my blog post about her during all of her difficult days. I wanted to write something at least equal to that. Whether I did is for others to decide, but I know she knows how I feel and that is enough for me.
I am glad I did the slideshow too, though I barely slept for three days working on it. It was the first time all of those pictures of her and our family had been gathered into one place. Each of us had various pictures from over the years, but we discovered that we each also had some very old pictures, and that we all had different ones. By assembling them, we were able to tell an important part of her story and our family’s story in pictures and music. It played in the background off to the side at the funeral home, and we all shared a lot of good memories together while we watched.
I got to sit with her just the two of us and say goodbye to her that last time I was there. I also wanted to say goodbye publicly and tell everyone who might read and see these things that a wonderful soul had left us. But I imagine I’ll be saying my goodbyes in one way or another for a long time – however long the grieving takes for me.
We simultaneously celebrate inspiring lives well-lived, but doing so leaves a painful gap in our lives that will never completely fill back in. I suppose our roles now are to live out the examples they set for us, though we have big shoes to try to follow in.
@Amanda – Those are six brilliant words. What a perfect truth they represent. I hope we can keep them in mind and use them to focus us on promoting inclusion, diversity, and the value of every human being.