#51: i've lost my grandmother
thoughts on grief and trying to adjust to this new "normal"
hi hi hi sisters ♡ thank you for giving me grace for missing last week. for those of you that don’t know on saturday sept 7th, my grandma jo passed away. I flew out to vegas very last minute on the morning of sept 5th as my grandma was admitted to hospice the night before. I was able to spend two days with her and my family at hospice and it was really nice to be able to say goodbye. but coming back to new york super late sunday night/early monday morning, I did NOT feel prepared to write for the substack, so I took a little break and I thank you for your patience and love
I will be writing more about my grandma jo below, but I truly hope that you all have had a wonderful couple of weeks. the air is starting to get crisp and I can almost taste fall (but not literally because I havent had a pumpkin spice latte, maybe this year will be my first year of having one, who knows)
continuing on for keeping the recommendations section to recommending different substacks that I read. I find it to be really important to support small “businesses” (that sounds odd to use here, but maybe influencers is another word I can use?) and one way I can do that is by sharing about them!
one of my very good friends,
, was one of the first people I knew that had a substack. he currently has two substacks, one of which is a personal one where he shares stories hes written, music he has made or found, photos he has taken, and so much more. its called and I love it. especially his most recent post where he reflected on friendships, this was my favorite part:“So much of who I am and the blessings and joy I feel come from the people that have been in my life. It’s bittersweet that the tides of life draw people toward various lands and paths, that people who I spent most days with are now years and states and countries away.
What a strange kind of beautiful it is that life weaves us together and apart, that who we are is made by the people long gone and others soon to come.
My friends from years ago will likely never read this, but it’s a thank you nonetheless.”
he also made a substack for teachers called
where he hopes to connect educators by sharing his process as a high school english teacher and how he is trying to be more innovative in the classroom to get high schoolers to love learning. I wish he was my high school teacher.
movies: even though i’m catching up on 2 weeks worth of movies I havent watched that many, but I did watch am I OK? while on the airplane back from vegas and I reallyyyy liked it. it stars dakota johnson and its about a woman in her 30s dealing with coming out “later” in life. its really just sweet and beautiful. I went and saw my old ass with faith and alyssa on friday as it just came out in theaters and HOLY SHIT. its so heartwarming and lovely and a perfect coming of age movie and I want to watch it again. I sobbed my little eyes outs. its cheesy, but in the perfect-only-a-coming-of-age-movie-can-pull-this-off kinda way. GO SEE IT!! for movie church this month we are watching latin/hispanic movies since september and october is hispanic heritage month. we watched the motorcycle diaries which is a story about che guevara who is a major figure in the cuban revolution. and then sunday night I watched ferris buellers day off with bjørn and it was perfect, I love that movie so much.
tv: I completely binged the secret lives of mormon wives on hulu and made a couple of tiktoks of my thoughts because I have SO MANY. I truly think it did a very good job at showing utah and mormon culture without really doing like any damage to the church (so the church needs to calm down with their PR statements). I thought it was very entertaining, especially as someone who doesnt watch reality tv, I was really enjoying myself.
podcasts: truly have been listening to everyone and their mother talk about the secret lives of mormon wives with so many different podcast episodes. girlscamp had jessi (from the show) on her podcast. SHE ALSO STARTED A PATREON AND IM SO PUMPED!! also the what we said podcast did an episode about the show and so did the popapologists and I even have some viall file episodes lined up to listen to.
in my mind: starting to read sense and sensibility for our next book to movie club book. and i’m not going to lie, sometimes I have a really hard time reading books that are older because my brain takes a lot longer to process what is happening. like I need to improve my reading comprehension skills MAJORLY
in my stomach: I went out to dinner with a friend this week to a place in new york called Gnoccheria East Village where they only really serve gnocchi but holy cow it was DELICIOUS! I got a fried gnocchi with cacio e pepe and it was soooo good. highly recommend checking it out if you like gnocchi. everything looked amazing and I had a hard time making a decision of what to get.
woof. dealing with death is hard. I feel so incredibly lucky and blessed that I didnt have to navigate death in my personal life until I graduated high school. the first instance of really grappling with death was when my friend tiare passed away the summer after our high school graduation. this was a shocking moment because it was a peer of mine that had passed away, and it was because of heat stroke and heart failure. the second time I had to grapple with death was once again with another peer of mine while I was about to turn 20. I know most people deal with death because of grandparents passing away while being younger. I knew my great grandparents and had them in my life through most of college. and all of my grandparents (I have 4 sets of them because of divorces and stuff) have been around in my life until I lost my grandpa back in 2019.
that was the first time I really had to deal with death up close and personal within my family, and it was really hard. but I was also very religious at the time, with a very firm belief of what happened to us after we passed away. so while it was tricky and hard and sad and I had to go through grief, I felt a lot of peace because I KNEW that I would see him again.
fast forward 5 years and I’m now grappling with death again. but this time my life circumstances are drastically different. I’ve been living across the country from my family for the past 4 years and I only go home maybe once a year, I no longer have a sound faith belief system to fall onto for support about what happens after we die, and while this may sound silly, I am not close to marriage or starting my own family - both of which I thought my grandma would see in her lifetime. and these aspects make this death so much trickier to reconcile.
my sister and I didnt grow up in the most stable environment, it was quite chaotic honestly. our parents divorced when I was 6 and she was 2. for the next 7 years we bounced around from apartment to apartment to house to apartment to condo to apartment to trailer to home to apartment and so on with our mother. I went to three different middle schools and my sister attended multiple different elementary schools. like I said, not a lot of stability. but we had one thing that was stable in our tumultuous lives, our grandparents. something that I am so incredibly grateful for is the fact that we grew up in las vegas with two sets of grandparents within 20 min of us. we saw them weekly, during elementary school my yaya and papou watched us most days after school. and in middle school it was my grandma jo and papa. we had dinner with them most nights of the week. and it was lovely. truly when I think back on my childhood my grandparents are at the forefront of my mind. so losing my grandma jo last week has left a wound that will take a long time to heal. I have lost not only a grandparent, but a stable part of my childhood.
I dont want this to only be a depressing segment on grief, so I want to share some of my favorite memories of my grandma jo. for she was SO fun and loving and caring and silly and the most quintessential grandma you could ever meet.
so this isnt quite a memory but more so a story that I know, when I was 2 I lived in hawaii with my parents while my grandparents were in las vegas. my grandma jo would send me starbucks madeleines in the mail. she came up with a story that she actually made them herself and sold them to starbucks and I believed that for a LONG LONG LONG time. needless to say that eating madeleines will always remind me of her, and to this day they are still my favorite treat from starbucks.
my grandma jo would always drink a combo of jack daniels and coke, specifically caffeine free diet coke if they had it, which my grandparents always had cases stocked up in their house, and she called it grandma juice. she also loved dreyers ice cream, specifically the slow churned chocolate, but later in life she switched to the regular vanilla.
my grandma jo was SO into crafts. holy cow that woman had a whole craft room, and is probably a big reason as to why I love crafting so much. she had every acrylic color you could think of. she made her own jewelry. she had her own little business called grandma jo’s attic where she would buy random stuff wholesale and sell it along with her crafts. we would go to an event in boulder city every summer with her called art in the park, which was an outdoor art festival. she loved it there.
I could truly go on and on and on about my grandma jo. but just know this, she loved being a grandma so much. like that was her life calling and she fulfilled it, nay, exceeded it. i’ll miss her tight squeezes and her spunky attitude. i’ll miss watching her eat ice cream with her teeth because her front teeth weren’t real and she couldn’t feel the cold. i’ll miss her stories of travel and her love for elvis. i’ll miss seeing her and my papa together, they were captivated by each other and were such a good example of true love and marrying your best friend.
but most of all, i’ll miss having a grandma jo I can call and talk to whenever I want, I took it for granted. i’m going to miss my gmj ♡
tiktok: i cry for strangers on the daily because of this app; an incredibly relatable reaction if I too met reba
pinterest: love these butterfly doodles; NEED this basket
instagram: new york will never not be my first love; the we live in time press tour is going to be the end of me in the best way; trinket girls > > > >
thanks for being here! I love having you read along. I love this little corner of the internet and I love you all for being here to support me. HAVE A GREAT WEEK!!
So sorry for your loss ❤️ I lost my grandma in 2021 and reading this letter brought back memories
That fried gnocchi looks amazing!! ❤️❤️ Also love the little starbucks Madeleine story. What a cutie grandma!