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Endings and Beginnings©
I thought it would be easy, burying Grandma. I hadn't seen her in almost a year, even though she lived and died just down the street from my home. Hadn't seen her since shortly before Roger and I went across the world to bring home our baby Alia. Grandma didn't like Roger very much. Said he was too old for me, that it wasn't right to marry a man nearly twice my age. She said it without really saying it at all; her lips pressed in a firm line, eyes narrowed to disapproving slits.
I knew she was dying then, and that I'd never see her again. I cried that night and into the next day, wondering if she'd still be alive when I got back with the baby. Through summer and fall, I asked of her often. I watched her house as I drove by, hoping to see a glimpse of her peering back through the window at me. Cancer took her slowly, each morning allowing her to wake only for more pain than the day before. And the family gathered by her side, stepping back to the dark recesses of her room to shake their heads in the shame of it all. It's hard, they'd report to me, to watch a woman with a will of steel fade away into a shadow before your eyes. She was one of the strongest people I'd ever met. Only 35 years old when her husband died, and with six young children to raise. A certain judge in the county wanted to take those children, divvy them up in separate homes across the region. But she just gave that judge her disapproving look, went home, and tended to her business. She never danced again after Grandpa died. Never laughed without waiting to hear his laughter in the room. Never loved another, no not once, in the nearly fifty years of life she had left after he had gone.
The copyright of the article Endings and Beginnings
in Multicultural Family is owned by Susan Culver. Permission to republish Endings and Beginnings
in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.
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