{"id":382,"date":"2025-06-21T23:51:22","date_gmt":"2025-06-21T22:51:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.danielscardoso.net\/blog\/?p=382"},"modified":"2025-06-21T23:51:22","modified_gmt":"2025-06-21T22:51:22","slug":"goodbye-grandmother","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.danielscardoso.net\/blog\/archives\/382","title":{"rendered":"Goodbye, grandmother"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

TW: death, mental health, chronic illness, disability<\/p><\/blockquote><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

There are so few readily available scripts to talk about death in contemporary Western society. I don\u2019t know if this would be easier if my story was easier, if it was cleaner or more morally unambiguous. \u00abI love you, you\u2019ll be forever missed, goodbye\u00bb. And it\u2019s not that any of those things is untrue, or not felt, or said for the sake of appearances. It is only that it feels so little. It feels like it does not encapsulate the complexity of my feelings, right now (\u2013 and, I wonder, of how many others?).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My grandmother\u2019s presence in my life was a complex affair: as I was little, I would see her often, since we lived close by. As I grew a bit older, geography changed our respective lives. Geography and, I would later understand, mental illness, chronic illness, and the gendered labour of caring for family, caring for a husband, caring and carrying the caring. (My own certainty of much of this chronology is slim; I was way too young to remember it, I have too few memories, taken away by so many other things, and the stories that I hear around me don\u2019t always line up, match up, or at least not to the degree that my academic-centered, archival and chronologically driven mind can find acceptable, peaceful, restful.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

From than point on, the customary became an every-now-and-then occurrence, and one that brough much joy and celebration; the 3+ hour trip by car from the outskirts of a village in the hills of Algarve to the bustling periphery of Lisbon, (unre)marked by racialized bodies living in subhuman conditions while holding on to their humanity, my childhood self passing through but never with, taught to be careful but not fearful.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is where things get sticky. This is where I think you, grandmother, got stuck. Were made to get stuck. Needed to stick to. I don\u2019t know which \u2013 if any; maybe all.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Years later, as that distance narrowed from 300Km to two streets away, I was hurting but unable to comprehend that pain, unable to process it. I believe you tried to help as you could, as you knew. I also believe that you were, even back then, even some 25 years ago, no longer really \u2018you\u2019. That the \u2018you\u2019 that represented you in your fullness was something that I never got to truly meet, not as a self-conscious, self-aware, self-critical person. And the \u2018me\u2019 that I was then \u2013 more so the \u2018me\u2019 that I am now \u2013 was also (maybe) no longer at your grasp. But I do believe that you saw people needing care, and that you tried to care, to provide that care \u2013 even if, in reality, you were the one (also) needing care, your mind no longer truly there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

(There is a memory of you I have which I cannot fully place, but which has always stuck with me. I remember you saying you\u2019d like me to be a doctor. But not any doctor. A gynecologist. To my childhood mind, what little grasp I had of the word only made it into \u2018just\u2019 a specialty, same as thoracic surgeon. Is it funny that I still ended up connected to sexology and sexualities\u2019 studies \u2013 though not a gynecologist, as you\u2019d have wanted? I don\u2019t know \u2013 but I am pretty sure that I can more fully appreciate the subtlety involved in a woman who has the 4th grade and worked for a pharmaceutical factory, who was raised during the height of the Portuguese fascist dictatorship, to tell me I should go into gynecology precisely because I did not go into gynecology.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then, because poverty is a thing, and because single-parent families are a thing, and because parental recklessness is a thing, that two streets\u2019 distance turned into 2 meters \u2013 the distance from one bedroom door to another, all under one roof; my teenaged self trying to cope with watching adults physically and mentally withered and withering, frailty and the looming presence of utter dependence and disability an everyday presence. True \u2013 it did not last long, that period. But it lasted long enough. Forever enough. What I did not see, or could not comprehend, or did not understand, was that adults \u2013 like children, like teenagers \u2013 are also always changing. That every tick of the clock was a tick away from \u2018you\u2019 being \u2018you\u2019. That what was stuck, was more and more stuck.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As I went on, as life went on, things got rougher between us. I felt I was soaring \u2013 secondary school, university, a masters\u2019, a PhD. And at every step, in every moment, you were so joyous to see me \u2013 and in every step, in every moment, I became more and more avoidant, more and more averse to the hugs and kisses that I had sought years prior, that I still seek so often in those who are close to me, me the cuddle-monster that I am. It took me so long to see that I \u2013 that we \u2013 had fallen into a vicious circle: the more you pulled, the more I pushed away.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Why did I push away? The answer I have now \u2013 will it change in the future? \u2013 is that I did not feel seen. At every turn, you would use your soft and joyous voice to intone \u00abHere\u2019s my little grandchild!\u00bb, and I felt unseen, unremarked, I felt forced into that place and time of pain (or maybe of the place and time before the pain?), when what I wanted was to grow, to change, to be seen as more than that child. I felt disrespected \u2013 I have no other word for it. More and more so, that you kept violating my personal and physical boundaries and would only acknowledge that I wanted you to give me some space if I \u2013 sometimes literally \u2013 shut the door to my own bedroom and held it close with the weight of my body.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I don\u2019t think I remember ever having had a conversation with you \u2013 not something that I would call a conversation. I, who can hold conversations for hours. I felt that you were proud of me \u2013 of my accomplishments \u2013 but that you did not see me. That was the source of so much bitterness and frustration in me \u2013 so much of which I cannot yet let go of, even now that I have had to say goodbye, even now that you can no longer do anything that makes me feel unseen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But were you, \u2018you\u2019? What parts of you were there still, amidst neurodegeneration, amidst the pills, amidst the aftermath of psychiatric illnesses galore, past and (then-)present? That was the part I did not see. Or refused to see \u2013 I do not know. I felt that you were trying to make me be stuck, but I am not sure that I ever really understood that you were stuck. That you had been stuck for a very long time \u2013 and that maybe, clinging to me (literally, and metaphorically) was a way to escape the present and stick to the past. Did you ever feel stuck? Would I have been able to have this conversation with you, years ago, before the brunt of the symptoms took hold? Or did I just write you off as incapable of that, arrogantly, because I felt unseen and thus incomprehensible to you?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Were you trying to make me stuck, or were you clinging to what little joys you could have, you could remember, you could muster, and seek solace in the childish happiness that I once gave you, even after the child was gone? I do not know.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I grew up watching you suffer for others, and watching others suffer for you \u2013 always the labour of care, always the amplified burdens of a society that does not care about caring. Your suffering is ended now and \u2013 being all cold and utilitarian \u2013 that means that fewer people will have to carry the burden of care because of that. Do not think that there is any rejoicing in this goodbye \u2013 just, maybe, a deep sigh from a breath long-held.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

None of that, though, can answer me who you were; none of that can truly say if I am now, with eyes clouded by tears, more clearly able to see all the stickiness around you, me, your past, my past, our past.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And so this is my script, this is my convoluted goodbye \u2013 not one of simple joyous memories shared and celebrated in unison, but a lack of those memories. Not one of beautiful marking moments and conversations, or intimacy shared, but of distance and resentment. Not one of finality and connection, but one of frustration \u2013 first and foremost at myself for what I did not see when I was so busy feeling unseen, then at the mundane banality of neurons and neurotransmitters and physicality as a whole.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In death, you bequeath me with so many questions that I was never able to hold in my hands while you lived. Pained though they may be, I will always cherish questions, and the doors they open for me to become unstuck from who I am today.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So, thank you. And goodbye, grandmother.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

5\/10\/2023<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

TW: death, mental health, chronic illness, disability There are so few readily available scripts to talk about death in contemporary Western society. I don\u2019t know if this would be easier if my story was easier, if it was cleaner or more morally unambiguous. \u00abI love you, you\u2019ll be forever missed, goodbye\u00bb. And it\u2019s not that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":true,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[71],"class_list":["post-382","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-genero"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5CI4b-6a","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danielscardoso.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/382","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danielscardoso.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danielscardoso.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielscardoso.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielscardoso.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=382"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielscardoso.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/382\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":384,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielscardoso.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/382\/revisions\/384"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danielscardoso.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=382"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielscardoso.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=382"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielscardoso.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=382"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}