08/21/2026
Something about the heat today brought me back to May 9, 2025, the day my grandmother died.
It has taken me more than a year to understand how much of her death I carried in my body.
For months, my shoulders stayed lifted and locked. During the day, I had to keep reminding myself to lower them. At night, I would clench my entire body so tightly in my sleep that I would wake up in pain.
It has taken me more than a year to calm my nervous system and begin releasing what my body was holding.
About three hours after my grandmother died, we went back to her house. Her air conditioner was set to 64 degrees, but it was 78 degrees inside. It was so hot that I became overwhelmed and left the house. I went to sit in the park in front of her home because I needed to breathe.
While I was sitting there, I looked up and saw her son walking across the parking lot towards me, smacking and chomping on the the very grapes my grandmother always kept in a Ziploc bag on her bed.
The same bed where she had been found dead only hours earlier.
I have not been able to forget that.
I also have not been able to forget the circumstances surrounding her final days.
The Sunday before she died, my grandmother told her daughter-in-law that she felt like the life was being drained out of her body.
The Thursday before she died, she had a doctor’s appointment that was a follow-up after being released from the hospital 2 weeks prior. She was not taken to that appointment.
By Friday morning, she was dead.
When my mother found her, she texted the family. During a conversation that followed, her son said he had just spoken to her only ten minutes before she died.
That has never settled with me because my grandmother could barely speak. She could not breathe, and she was using an oxygen machine that was not even hers.
There are things about my grandmother’s final days that still do not make sense to me. I have questions, and I have carried them quietly for more than a year.
When I began asking questions, my family disowned me. I had questions they did not have, and my questions were not welcomed. I was grieving my grandmother while also dealing with what it cost me to question the circumstances surrounding her final days.
I am not telling anyone what to believe. I am finally talking about what happened, what I witnessed, and what it did to me.
I am ready to talk about it.
