Welcome to Midweek Musings, where I take the random, chaotic, and occasionally profound thoughts from my journal and throw them into the void (aka your inbox). Think of it as a peek inside my brain — except I’ve filtered out the truly unhinged stuff (you’re welcome).
Some musings will be deep, some will be ridiculous, and some will make you wonder if I should get more sleep. Either way, I felt like they needed to be shared, and now they’re your problem too. Enjoy!
Last week’s edition:
Since my grandma passed away, I have found myself being extra sensitive to the feelings of older people, particularly older women. I’ve noticed that older women tend to be ignored; most of them were raised in and married into households where they were expected to be more seen than heard and, as a result, I feel like they tend to second guess themselves when they speak because they feel like no one will really care about what they have to say anyway. While this most certainly is not always the case — I have so many elders on my dad’s side of the family who are loud and boisterous — I have become more sensitive to it.
Recently, I was watching the first episode of John Mulaney’s Everybody’s Live and I was particularly struck by Joab Baez’s appearance on the show. There was a part where John asks Joan to describe the sense of humor of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr and, in typical elder fashion, she gets to the point in a kind of round-a-bout way that doesn’t really answer John’s question. Later in the show, there is a part where Joan begins to tell a joke but shakes her head and says “nevermind” instead. Watching this kind of broke my heart and made me feel like maybe she said nevermind because her earlier story was dismissed by the group she is sitting with.
My grandma loved to talk. Like the southerners we are, we were often on the phone for two or more hours at a time, discussing everything under the sun until our voices were hoarse. After my grandpa and my uncle died — the two people she spent all of her time with and taking care of for the better part of ten years — she talked a lot more, like she was excited to finally have someone to share her thoughts with and she couldn’t stop them all from tumbling out at once. While I always did my best to pay attention, I did often find my attention drifting elsewhere. I would scroll through Instagram while half listening to her stories and I would “Uh huh” and “Wow” and “Right” so she thought I was as immersed as she probably wanted me to be. I regret this now. It was selfish of me and I wish I had listened to her more. I wish I had asked her more questions about her life before me, before my grandpa even. I wish I had taken the opportunity to learn who she was outside of being my grandmother.
Although I obviously knew my grandma was going to have to die eventually, I never actually expected her to. In my mind, she was immortal and I would have more than enough times to correct all the times I took her for granted. At the time of her death, I was actively avoiding her phone calls, not because I didn’t want to talk to her but because I was in the process of moving back to Las Vegas and I didn’t want her to worry about me because it would have stressed me out even more. On Easter she left me a voicemail and I told myself I would call her back the day after I flew to Vegas; I knew she would be proud of me for making it back with no hiccups and with a job already lined up to start the following week. She called me again a week later and I declined her call but I did text her back to remind her that I loved her and missed her.
Easter was March 31, 2024. On April 13, she was dead 6 days before I was planning on calling her back.
I stil struggle with feeling like a bad person because of the way I was dodging her calls and I think not calling her back is one of the biggest regrets I have. On every holiday last year, I went to call her before remembering there would be no one to pick up. On my birthday I kept finding myself waiting for her call, the one where she would sing me Happy Birthday as soon as I picked up but of course it never came.
I would do anything for just one more phone call, so I could pick it up and talk for hours. My grandma was my best friend and it still makes me so incredibly sad to think about her. When I’m having a bad day, I want to call her so badly and being unable to makes me feel worse.
I hope she isn’t disappointed in me for not answering and for not calling her back. I think that’s what I worry about the most.
