You may remember Melanie from a couple months ago. Now you can see her because the pictures are working again! Her beautiful words from our open mic night inspired me and here she is again sharing her own transition and reflection on her dear grandmother.
“Growth in change” spurns several images in my mind: small green sprouts emerging out of a sea of concrete, flower petals of vibrant hues blooming in the midst of frost, beautiful buildings constructed on devastated land. I saw bright colors contrasting darkness, symbols of hope and future existing in counter-intuitive places. Images of life, even though all things point to death.
Right now, death seems to be pointed to from every direction, particularly in the life of my grandmother, Nani. Nani is experiencing a pretty significant, harrowing change: her body and mind are breaking down at an ever-increasing rate, and eventually will succumb to that degeneration. Her body will not know what to do anymore; her mind won’t know what’s going on. My grandmother has Alzheimer’s Disease—a devastatingly slow change that does not result in growth, but rather, it’s antithesis: in decay.
The funny thing about my relationship with Nani is that I’ve been anticipating her death for decades, as Nani has spent most of my life constantly reminding me of everything I’ll inherit when she and my grandfather pass away. As children, she would take my sister and I on tours around their house, asking us to point out what we wanted to receive when they were gone. Nani has gone so far as to write our names on the back of pictures and on the bottom of trinkets in the house. “Everything, “ she would say proudly, “will be yours.”
Nani’s desire to prematurely delegate her things out to us was silly—a little neurotic, but mostly endearing. It would be the quip I would use to contribute to the “Grandparents say the darnest things” conversations with friends. It became rather taxing, however, to hear your still-quite-healthy grandmother constantly talk about the end of her life—focusing on the inevitability of her future death rather than on her present experience as one of the living. I realized recently that my perception of Nani has not been as a woman who lives, as one who contributes to life or has a story to tell, but as someone who will pass away.
I’ve been carrying this conflict of Nani’s life and coming death around with me for months now, trying to sift through the typical mysteries that one toils with in the face of the death of a loved one. Questions like, who was Nani? What’s her history? How does she know herself, and how does she want to be known? I find myself wondering if Nani understood herself as someone whose purpose was to give to those who she loved, never to receive. I felt that I loved Nani by receiving from her, and shamefully realize that I never established a habit of giving, of learning, or of asking. Now, when I want to drink in every word she says, I feel awkward, bumbling through my questions and comments, trying to break the habit of many years of our relationship being based on shallow exchanges and (at times forced) smiles of gratitude. My devastation is made even more acute in knowing that as I am trying to change and grow in our relationship, she doesn’t realize it, or can’t. For the first time, I am the giver, but she cannot receive.
I am not sure what it means to attempt to find growth and life in the ashes of death. The finality of everything is overwhelming, and I often wondering if I am just grasping for meaning when maybe there just isn’t any there. In a world that creates meaning out of history and shapes understanding out of stories, it’s tempting to understand Nani’s quieting story as a tragedy—that all of what she is composed of is slowly slipping away, and once she is gone, she will never truly be known. I really want to believe that all is not lost in the deep, inaccessible crevasses of Nani’s memory, but that her hopes, dreams, and thoughts that constitute the deep fabric of herself are held in the memory of God. A God that generates life counter-intuitively, and when the creation He set in motion is fulfilled in death, there is still a promise of life.
Death is the changing of something that was once known in one fashion, but now exists in another—body to spirit, consumption to decay, active story to living memory. In reflecting on her death, I realize that I am Nani’s living memory: her death will just be a change, a transition. I will carry her life, her pride of her family, her gentle and sweet spirit, her desire to care for all who she loved. I am her voice that transcends her death, that tells her story, creates meaning of her experience. My growth emerges from her, and propels who she is into the future; we, everyone who she loved and who loves her, are the life that survives her death. Which, maybe, is what she wanted in the first place.
Cissy Brady-Rogers is an embodied woman who changed my life. If you’ve read A Beautiful Mess, then you know her impact is amazing. Her job title would read marriage and family therapist, eating disorder specialist, spiritual director, yoga instructor, and adjunct psychology faculty at Azusa Pacific Univ. However, she would say, “Personally, I am a woman with a genuine story of growing through my own food and body related challenges. My overweight childhood and puberty, a date rape in my young adult years, and a mastectomy for breast cancer at age thirty have been among my greatest teachers on the journey to loving my body. I have mined the treasures of the dark places in my story and gleaned much wisdom. I look forward to an opportunity to share these riches with you.” 
Katie loves Belgian waffles and is a connoisseur of lemonade. She adores her husband Nate and her nephews bring her more joy than she ever thought possible. She loves the San Francisco Giants’s, the beach, all things design, writing, and truly finds pleasure in life’s little things. She can be found blogging at 
Sara Honda works at the University of Colorado Denver. In her free time, she loves mentoring teenage girls, exploring the beautiful sunny state of Colorado, and watching Survivor. She secretly loves professional golf, hates onions and Crocs with a passion, and wishes she was a hip hop dancer.
