The Tears Came

On April 24th, 2025, my grandma transitioned from this life to the next.

I’ve been struggling with words. As I’ve opened and closed this page countless times over the past week and a half, my mind seems to empty and all I’ve got left are the feelings. Memories. Fleeting sensations from childhood mixed with the solid reality of the present. In one breath I’m a squealing child, fleeing her kitchen as she chases after us with a wiggly, dripping octopus between her fingers, and the next I’m holding her hand at Eternal Spring in her final days, tearful staff and residents coming in to see her off alongside us. All of it speaks to how much I love her (and how much she was loved by others), even when the words don’t come. Because the truth is, it’s impossible to fully express what a person means to us. And it’s especially difficult when we’re right in the middle of feeling a lifetime’s worth of emotions. When we’re saying goodbye.

Grief isn’t something I’ve traditionally processed in real time. In fact, as a part of my own healing journey over the past 5 years or so, I’ve learned that I tend to have delayed emotional responses to most things. For instance, when my best friend, Billy, died in 2005, my life spiraled out, but I didn’t actually feel and process anything until much, much later. I’m talking, 2020. Fifteen years. It’s the same for even less intense events as well, like a conversation with a friend or strange interaction with the checkout person at the store. In the moment, I feel very little, but an hour or a day (or a month) later, it hits.

So, imagine my surprise when my grandma breathed her last, and I immediately felt it. My intuition was confirmed when my mom texted “Grandma just passed… very peacefully.”

Now, her death wasn’t a surprise by any means. I’d spent time with her the day before, and we all knew the end was near. But I cannot describe the peace that descended upon me in the minutes leading up to that text. I’d been meditating, and felt my grandmother’s presence. I told her it was alright to go—that we all knew she was ready, and everyone would be okay. My chest was aching, and when my mom’s text came through, it was like a dam breaking.

The tears came.

They came furiously at first, tightening my chest and warping my hearing. My throat clamped down and my head throbbed with it. It’s not that I don’t cry—I definitely do—but this was different. It was the kind of release that had me feeling like I was suspended somewhere in the ocean’s depths, my tears joining an already formed tsunami as it roared by. It was an intense, shaking thing that I can only describe as primal. And I’m so incredibly grateful for it.

In the days following her passing, I had moments of tearfulness, and even a few episodes of outright crying, but nothing quite so intense as that first night. It’s like, by allowing that tsunami to pass through me, my grief is coming in manageable waves now. They may displace me a bit, and I may need to kick to the surface for air, but it’s nothing so all-consuming as what I experienced that first night, or what I experienced when that long-repressed grief for Billy finally surfaced. This has been cleansing. Freeing, even.

Truly, it’s such a new experience for me, this feeling everything up front and allowing it to move through me whenever it arises. It’s new, but damn, it feels healthy. In the past I’ve relied on writing to help me access my feelings more easily, but now they seem to exist even without the written words to describe them. So when I found myself unable to put anything down on paper (or in a document on my computer), it was alright. And as we’re nearing two weeks and I’m only just now returning to my laptop, nothing feels stuck or stagnant. It just feels like this is how I’m meant to experience it this time—first with the heart, then with the head. I’m entering that more intellectual space now, and I can do so with far more clarity since my body has gently handled her loss so far, and nothing repressed is fighting for acknowledgment.

My grandmother was someone I deeply respected and loved. She still is. While she may not be here in the same way, I know she’s here in myriad others. She’s in my father’s insistence that people try whatever strange new food creation he’s come up with. She’s in my daughter’s smile. She’s in my love of crochet and the way I hold my chopsticks, not only because she’s the one who taught me both, but because those memories live on as vividly as the day we shared them the first time. She’s in every single person she touched, and with 94 years on this planet, she touched many.

I’m so thankful for the time we had, even if it never would have been enough. And I’m so thankful she can rest now.

Until we meet again, Grandma, I love you.