I’m not really sure where to put this, or how I’m supposed to explain what’s been happening to me recently, but I thought it would be nice just to get this off my chest.
My grandmother died last year.
I was in my last semester of college—I was finishing up my thesis in philosophy, and that week my dad called me, telling me that my grandma hadn’t been doing well and asking if I wanted to see her with him. I immediately agreed make the trip with him, and that Thursday, I drove down from Dallas to Houston, and then, on Friday, we headed out.
It wasn’t really surprising. Her health had been deteriorating pretty rapidly the past five years, but it really picked up in the last three or so months before she died. Or, at least that’s what my uncle said. He was the one that had been taking care of her.
My grandmother was a smoker—and that caught up to her eventually. She got COPD and all the stuff that goes along with it, and eventually, she just lost the will to live.
I didn’t need anyone to tell me that part—I saw it for myself when we got there.
She didn’t look so good. Which is understandable. She was sick. She was dying. Of course she wasn’t going to look good.
I wasn’t expecting her to look dead already though.
Throughout the whole drive, my dad and I talked, and for some reason, we really hadn’t understood the severity of the situation. We hadn’t seen my grandmother since before COVID—my dad was really testy anytime my sister and I asked to go visit her, because she had a respiratory disease, and because my uncle and him weren’t on the best of terms.
It was a whole nine hour drive—we got caught behind three hours of traffic on the Atchafalaya Basin, and I thought it was just the funniest thing. I’d go to sleep for an hour, and we’d have moved three yards. I’d go to sleep again, and we’d have moved twenty yards. It went on like that. Before that whole fiasco, we stopped to get our ritual boudin and cracklin at some random (but fantastic) dinky little stop just off of I10. We stopped in Lafayette to get King Cakes since Mardi Gras was only two week away.
We’d always do that. Stop in Lafayette so we could get ten King Cakes and twenty petite fours to bring back home to Houston. My dad was a Louisiana supermesist when it came to food; and I always agreed with him. Chili and barbecue would never been as good as gumbo and red beans. Banana pudding and peach cobbler would never hit as hard as beignets and spumoni.
That whole drive, I was just excited to go back to New Orleans again after so long. It was home, after all. It was more home than Texas had ever been anyways, even though I had never lived there. All my favorite people lived in New Orleans. My grandmother, my great-aunts, my great-uncles, our family friends.
I was infinitely less excited to be there when we pulled up to my grandmother’s grimy little house in Marrero and opened the door.
Like I said before, she definitely didn’t look alive when we opened that door. She was already a corpse, basically. To say it was shocking would be an understatement. My grandmother was a tall women. She was 5’10, and while she had always been slight, she looked, and pardon me for the insensitivity but it really was the first thing I thought, like she belonged in those grainy black-and-white photos of concentration camp victims.
My uncle told us that she was 75 pounds.
She didn’t look like she was that heavy.
The whole thing was terrible. It was probably the worst day of my entire life. My grandmother was crying for her mama, and she was barely conscious—she didn’t recognize any of us. I thought she said my name at one point, but maybe that was just wishful thinking.
We took turns staying with her, my dad and I, feeding her pedialyte through a little sponge, most of her teeth rotted out from all those years of smoking, and I sang her all the little French lullabies she used to sing to me and my sister when we had been small. I cried a lot. My dad cried the first time I cried, but he regained his composure after that.
I feel guilty about that. I wish I had held myself together better so my father wouldn’t have had to comfort me. It was his mama after all. I feel like I stole something in that moment, with all my crying and weeping and generally acting like a fool. That’s really how I felt about the whole thing. That I was acting foolish and silly and that I didn’t have the right to be as sad as I was.
I didn’t call her as much as a should have. I didn’t send her letters as much as a should have. I didn’t appreciate her as much as I should have.
I just regret the whole thing—I just have so much that I regret about my grandmother’s death, so I really shouldn’t be surprised that she’s been haunting me in my dreams throughout this last year.
My dad even apologized for bringing me. He said that I shouldn’t have to remember her like that.
That made me regret everything even more.
I haven’t been great, as you can imagine. My grandmother and I used to close before she stopped talking to all of us. I’d spend the summers with her, and my family would go to visit her throughout the year when I was younger. My parents were big Saints fans, and as Saints fans know, after Katrina, and through about 2012, there was a lot of hype, and we were always going to New Orleans for home games (and even away games sometimes so my parents could go out and drink and watch the game with their friends.) When the Saints started to suck, we went less, but we’d still go for my grandma.
We don’t have a reason to go to New Orleans anymore. I’m so scared that the next time we’ll go is for another funeral. I’m so tired of going to a city I love for funerals.
That’s how my dreams started, I think. Regret and guilt and paranoia. It makes sense.
It’d be me getting a phone call, in a white room, and my grandmother’s voice would crackle through the phone. She’d never gotten a smart phone, so the audio quality was always terrible when she’d call.
“Hey, my baby,” she’d say, “When are you gonna come and visit me? I’ve been missin’ you, ya know.”
And I’d say, “You know daddy doesn’t want us visiting you right now, Mawmaw. Me and Ciccia keep asking him, but he’s all scary about COVID still. I told him we’d take a test before we visited, but he’s not messing with it.”
“You tell your daddy I don’t wanna see his big head. I wanna see my babies.”
“I’ll tell him, Mawmaw, but you know he’s hard-headed.”
My grandmother would talk on the phone, and she’d tell me how she made her pralines without a thermometer, and how thermometers were for cheaters. I’d tell her she was some sort of fairy or something because everyone uses thermometers to make their pralines now-a-days. She’d ask if I was calling her old. I’d laugh and say yes. We’d talk about how my daddy holds his cooking spoons just like her. The conversation would go on and on.
These dreams were nice. They were almost comforting, except the part when she’d hang up.
She’d say, “You better come visit me, girl, ‘cause next time you see me, I’ll be dead.”
And the line would fizzle out and the dial tone would beep, beep, beep, and then I’d wake up.
It’s weird, because I don’t usually remember my dreams. I never remember the good ones, at least. I usually only remember the bad ones.
And the dreams after this one only got worse.
It was my grandmother when she was young laying in a bed in the white room with me. We’d have the same conversation. She’d end it the same way before falling asleep. Then, it was my grandmother again, older, more wrinkly. Same conversation, same conclusion. Then, it was when her teeth started to fall out. Then, it was her, dying, laying in that bed with me, like she used to do when I was small and she’d sing me to sleep, but she’d just crying and groan the whole time.
Last night, I had a dream, and she didn’t say anything. Her eyes were open, but her chest didn’t move. It didn’t move for what seemed like ages, and after an eon, her mouth starts moving, and she’s speaking, but she’s not breathing, and it’s like something was moving her lips with strings and squeezing her voice box to make noise. I don’t remember what she said in the dream.
I can’t sleep right anymore. Not for more than an hour or two. And it’s hell. I’m tired all the time—I go to work, and I’m falling asleep at my desk, I’m falling asleep driving, and I’m just so exhausted.
I don’t know if putting this story here will help. I hope it does? I’m really at my wits end. I don’t know if I should go get counseling, or tell some professional about it, but I know I can’t keep doing this to myself. Everyone tells me that people grieve differently or whatever, and I thought I had grieved. I though I had cried enough, told enough people, written enough in my journals, but I can’t stop dreaming about her.
I don’t know. I just wanna sleep. It’s the middle of the day and I only slept two hours last night. I only slept an hour the night before.
It’s whatever, I guess. I’ll get through it. I just, I don’t know, I just wanted some comfort is all. It’s different when people you don’t know tell you you’re not crazy. They’re more objective. At least, that’s how I’m justifying the need to share this. I mean, this subreddit is called nosleep after all, right? And after reading some of these stories I thought this would be a good place. I thought someone would get it. Maybe not, and I’m crazy for real.
Here’s to hoping I get a full night’s sleep.