for Verina
for Verina
a tribute to my late grandmother
my grandmother died on March 28th of this year. i woke up that morning to a backlog of condolences in the family WhatsApp groupchat, and my heart sank once i scrolled up and saw my Aunt Bisa's announcement. not that i could really sit in the feeling for long because i had to rush and get ready for a work meeting after sending my own message. there's much to be said about how the demands of capitalism foreclose opportunities to be present for tragedies, whether personal or global, but i don't feel like saying it. i'm sure you know one way or another, dear reader.
Mother's Day 2024 was the last time we spoke to each other. i can't remember any specifics from our conversation, but i called to celebrate her. as always, her thick Bajan accent wrapped around me like a warm hug. ten days later, she suffered a massive stroke that left her unspeaking and immobile. an exclamation point on the sentence of mini-strokes she had in 2023 that made her a fall risk in her own home. due to the medical infrastructure in the islands, it took weeks before a doctor consulted with Bisa to give any meaningful updates about my grandma's condition. once they did, they told her that my grandma would die in her hospital bed. neither premonition nor promise. just prognosis removing the hope of improvement, crassly delivered and absent of the comfort i'm sure she could have used while carrying the load of caregiving. during the ten months of her hospitalization, my grandma's condition stabilized, then slowly waned. for ten months, i prayed not necessarily for her recovery, but for her comfort and her realized autonomy. she was able to squeeze a hand, blink her eyes, and move her lips to communicate with those who visited her bedside until she grew too weak to do so. until it was her time to go.
i spent last month in acute mourning. expectedly of her physical absence, but the loss of her also unearthed grief i felt around not having more embodied time with her while she was alive. i was a child the last time we were in the same room together. when we were still fairly new to Georgia, she came to live with my parents and me for several months before she left to work in New York. i look back fondly at that time with a mind's eye blurred by the passage of years. the only thing i can recall for certain was our Friday night ritual where she would join me as i watched WWE Smackdown, girlchild and grandwoman hooting and hollering at the choreographed flamboyance of machismo. ever since her departure to head up north (and then her eventual return to the Caribbean), we tended to our relationship through phone calls and video chats. always at a distance.
such was the same after her death. at Bisa's invitation and after a bit of procrastination, i texted her a written tribute that would be included in the funeral program alongside others:
whether near or far, I've always held deep curiosity and appreciation for my grandmother. now that she is gone from this earth in her physical form, she will be dearly missed. in her absence, her memory will live on in all of us. it was (and still is) a great honor to be part of her lineage, and I pray that she is resting peacefully. fly high, Grandma.
my father video-called me—without warning, mind you—so i could see her body at the wake. a mercy, of sorts. she looked like herself, but she didn't look life herself. the only coherent sentence i remember saying was "this is surreal." through the haze of recognizing that this was the last time i would lay eyes on her physical form, i felt appreciative of the wavy lavender unit that had been installed on her head. purple, i learned, was her favorite color. the call ended minutes later, and i sat stunned for a spell before returning to work.
the following morning, i tied my head in white, wore a purple t-shirt, and played her favorite song ("She's Royal" by Tarrus Riley) before i attended her livestreamed burial alone in my living room. the ceremony inside the church was heartfelt yet succinct, acknowledging how, in life, my grandma never wanted to be stuck waiting anywhere for too long. once it was time to inter her body, my father and then my uncle went up to the graveside to push the soil into her final resting place. it was Earth Day, as fate would have it. two brothers quite literally returning their mother to the earth, who Mothers us all.
then came the procession of bouquets to grace the ground, then the benediction, then the ceremony came to close. and there i was, many miles away, confronted with the reality that i was yet again in front of a screen. a bittersweetened experience to say goodbye this way. i suppose it's better than not having been able to see anything at all, and the illusion of closeness highlighted my physical separation from my matriarch's death rites. the line between spectatorship and embodied witnessing thickens when somebody dies. more so when there aren't loved ones of any kind to provide physical support, which was my case. absence colored my April days.
now there remains a nearly-implacable regret warring with my gratitude for having known her in any capacity. regret that i never took a flight to visit her in Barbados once i could travel independently. regret that we only briefly touched on its possibility before she had her final stroke. regret that i convinced myself there was no space for me at her bedside after she became hospitalized. but then the gratitude re-emerges at a comparable magnitude. though what i have is scarcer than i would like, it is still substantial. i am grateful to have known the sound of her infectious laugh, to have experienced her penchant for storytelling, to have learned about her legacy of feeding and caring for others. the result: a stalemate. perhaps i may hold that tension until it is my time to go.
for now, i simply await the right moment to add her picture and the funeral program to my ancestral altar. for now, i wish to see her again in my dreams. Verina Verdina Simmons, i speak your name and i sing your praises. rest well.
