Thoughts on Grief.

As another year of losses and grieving comes to an end, I thought about the first time I met grief in adult life. Originally published in my now defunct (no pun intended) blog "Lost & Found Stories.

I hardly have any memories of my paternal grandmother.
As any kid conceived by the mixed marriage between a Northern Italian woman and Southern Italian man, I spent most of my childhood separated from one side of the family after my parents (meaning my mother) decided to settle down in a small village located in the flattest region of Italy, near the city of Modena, where my mom grew up.

The decision was taken as a consequence of my father’s schizophrenic work ethic which led us onto a nomadic lifestyle for years until my mom got fed up with dragging two small children around the world with barely any domestic support at home – the only two times she hired a nanny it didn’t work out well or we moved city shortly after.

She imposed herself and convinced my father to set up camp in Medolla, a tiny town characterized by sticky, hot, hay fields in the summer and thick fog in the humid winter. I learned to call this place home only way later in life.

I have a great deal of memories of my maternal grandmother which keep on getting topped up by new ones as the years go by and I advance in age, as does she.
Despite having entered what is probably going to be the last decade of her life, my mother’s mom is funny and lively. A true star.
Having lost her husband fairly prematurely was never a deterrent when it came to being tongue-in-cheek and witty, continuously giving into her son-in-law’s lewd jokes and constantly playing into her dramatic nature.
As a kid, I used to play on the cemented driveway of my grandma’s house, interacting with the neighbor’s nephew under the lead of my older sister, who at the time used to guide us on what seemed to be whimsical adventures, climbing up the tall trees in the backyard one day, hiding behind ivy trying to elude imaginary enemies the next.

I can list endless flashbacks of me and my mother’s mother, but I struggle to name more than five with my father’s.

Her name was Francesca, she was tall for a Sicilian woman born in the 1930s.
She’s often pictured standing on a step below my grandfather who, on the contrary, fit into all the imaginable stereotypes of a Southern Italian man. Short, bulky, dark-skinned with black coarse hair, a worthy descendant of the Moor domination.

I catch a glimpse of my late grandma in the slightly slanted, piercing cerulean blue eyes of my dad and I notice how her genes translated into him excavated the memory of a very specific feature from my subconscious. The bizarre visual memory of her feeble feet resting inside a pair of black leather orthopedic sandals one day we tried to take her to the beach, juxtaposed with my father’s pads wrecked by years of football practice.

She didn’t like the sun, or better, she thought sunlight was harmful and reserved for those working in the fields, tanning their skin like what we now consider precious leather. Legacy of an old (classist and racist if you will) era.

For this reason, despite being born and raised on the sunniest island of the Mediterranean, the few times she’d visit the beach, she’d do so fully clothed in one of her shapeless house moo moos.
I recall one in particular, a blue and green vest embellished with a flower pattern. The rare times she did make it to the beach, she wouldn’t dare leave the cocoon of shade projected by the beach umbrella. I doubt I have ever seen her touch sea water.

My grandmother had a very specific trait about her. A tuft of black hair disrupted the monotony of her thick grey short hairdo archetypical of most women above 60. I have always found this curious, especially after learning it shifted from white to black as her mane aged.

Browsing through the few pictures of her younger adulthood we own, you can recognize the decadent aristocratic heritage expected by an early 21st-century generation that benefitted from a bourgeois, landowning social structure through her sophisticated posture and perfectly steamed clothes. Her gaze relaxed, allowing only a delicate grin on her face.

Over the years, my grandmother developed a degenerative disease that impaired her balance and impacted her motor ability, forcing her to seek walking assistance and later relegating her to a wheelchair.

I remember visiting her for the holidays in her old apartment as a kid. The house where my dad and his siblings grew up before she relocated to one of my aunts.

I used to play in the long, candid hallway that connected the living room to the kitchen with my cousins, where she would be frying a million delicious Arancine and Panelle - the chickpea fritters signature of Palermo’s street food - drenching the room with the pungent smell of frying olive oil.
The white walls of the hallway were lined with family portraits and religious icons.
My grandma was extremely religious. So religious that she would fast not only during Lent but every Friday year-round.

I have this very clear mental image of her sitting at the short edge of the table and watching the pope on tv while breaking a small piece of bread. Often, I wonder if this is an accurate recollection.

Her faith had no borders. Back when we were living in Indonesia in the early 90s, she came along for a 20-day trip despite her intolerance for heat and humidity.

On the first Sunday, she asked my father to take her to church for mass.
The service was held in the local language, and when my dad asked her if she understood the sermon, she promptly shushed him and told him to listen because the preacher was reciting Latin.

Languages weren’t her forte anyways. Like many from her generation, Grandma Francesca only spoke the local dialect or a broken, colloquial version of the national language inflected by Italianized Sicilian idioms. I barely understood her over the phone, so I would agree to everything she was saying struggling to respond to her questions about my sister and mom.
During the years before her death, I resorted to answering “tutto bene”, everything’s good, to all she was spitting out of her weak, worn out mouth, waiting for that final “Ti voglio bene amore, say hello to Antonella and Talita”.

Despite the distance and recent emotional withholding, I loved her an unspeakable amount.

Our relationship was sewn together by the gifts she would make sure I received on big occasions.
One year in particular, she gifted me a luscious pink bathrobe I still keep sacred despite the holes caused by my excessive use of the item.

She never missed the chance to reiterate her love for her nieces and nephews by providing a gift to each one of us at every yearly celebration.

The girls would mainly receive homeware pieces with the goal to slowly compile our dowry following a centennial tradition, but as her mobility and finances began to constrict her, the gifts became holiday-themed knick-knacks. Yet, she still never skipped an anniversary. Now that she’s passed I often wonder what happened to those items, where in my parents’ house are they located.. and if I have thrown them away.

Her heart was full of love and kindness towards the youngest members of her family, but she had special regard for my sister and me. Perhaps a result of the distance.

She wasn’t always warm. In fact, in the beginning, she was opposed to my parents’ wedding. Family politics, I guess. I was never able to resent her or hold her accountable because in the end here I am.

I hadn’t talked to her in a year by the time she passed away, nor had my dad. More family politics. I didn’t think much of it until it happened and I received the news via WhatsApp. A simple message that disrupted my day, week, and life.

My father wanted to protect me from the pain, the grief.
I was in Paris, sitting at lunch with a good friend of mine. A salmon dish is on the table in front of me. I am not sure how I could possibly be able to hold it together. It was like the blood froze in my veins, stopping my brain from processing what had just happened, until I surrendered and salty, painful drops started flowing from my eyes, my heart started pumping fast, air got stuck in my throat and all of a sudden I felt helpless.
Panic took over my body leading me to a state of shock. What had just happened? How could that be true?
I didn’t find the courage to call my dad right away. I roamed the streets trying to sober up, but it didn’t work. Finally, I met grief for the first time at 28 years old, a fully-fledged adult.

I had been trying to prepare myself for death, but my training was useless, like strategizing for a war that presents itself sooner than expected.

Can we ever be ready to accept mourning and how does one heal the pieces?

Maybe we are not supposed to kintsugi the shattered heart in this case, but rather leave it to mend itself with the memory of our passed loved ones holding onto the few memories we have of them, not consuming ourselves thinking of who will be the next petal to drop.

The death of my grandma came a few days before the COVID-19 lockdown took place, making it even more impossible for me to hop on a plane to Palermo and honor her burial in the near future.

The day my father shared the news through a relaxed text carrying no heartache nor misery, conversely conveying a sense of surrendering and peace as if he knew that day was close and had been preparing for it, my first reaction was to meet him for the funeral as soon as I could, once back in Milan.

He surprised me with a demeanor I would have never expected from him as composure and placidity had always been a feature belonging to my mother.

The family drama situation on his side hadn’t been so pleasant, as part of his siblings had been fighting over – in my opinion – rather silly topics, which were yes, delicate but easily manageable as well.

To shield me from the anger, he told me not to worry about the funeral, and that I could visit her at the cemetery once the waters cleared.

With a heavy heart, I yielded to his plea and decided to join him at my family house over the weekend, which would also coincide with his birthday.

My father arrived home on a clear Saturday morning, the kind of day announcing the quick approach of Spring. No clouds in sight, a vivid baby blue sky above us.

A loud whistle cut through the loud white noise orchestrated by birds, a typical sign of my dad’s appearance on the premises.

I stood up from my cross-legged yoga stance and popped my head out of the pink lace curtains adorning my childhood bedroom, over the balcony I had long neglected to see if the familiar shriek was coming from who I thought it was.

I was right. My dad was standing right on the other side of our red brick fence, exhausting electronic cigarette fumes out of his grey scruff-framed mouth.
For a long time, I have been begging my parents to quit that disgusting habit, but right now I felt like he deserved his smoke.

I smiled at him, forcing myself to contain the tears in my eyes from lashing out. If he was unperturbed, why couldn’t I be?

I rushed downstairs to hug him, just like the old times, when I was growing up, mostly without his presence, and he would return home after a long business trip somewhere exotic where he’d be scavenging for the next great football talent.

After the standard chit-chat, he took his shoes off and laid straight across our - now worn out -  blue Alcantara sofa, cigarette still in hand. He looked at me, with a visible layer of melancholy in his eyes this time, and said “You know, when my father died many many years ago, I felt distraught. But when your mother dies, it’s a whole different level of pain. Mom is always mom”.

A knot suddenly materialized in my throat and all my strength shifted towards trying to squeeze my tear ducts shut.

That night my whole family, including my sister’s in-laws and my mother’s mom, gathered at a fish restaurant in celebration, to give my father the birthday he deserved after seeing his mother go. But right after the appetizer’s plates were cleared off our table, the local media sent out breaking news, announcing the country’s preliminary lockdown affecting Lombardy and a few other provinces badly affected by COVID-19, which meant I’d have to leave in that very moment if I wanted to make it back home in Milan without being impacted by the new policy.

And so I got up in a frenzy, leaving my family behind, heart in shambles, without knowing what would come in the next months.
As death and despair started filling the air around me, I often sat in silence thinking of my now-defunct grandma.
An iron woman who lived through the worst years of the mafia wars, raising four children to stay away from that life of crime, solely on my grandfather’s post office income. Piercing grief cut through me each time.

It’s been almost two years since she passed away and I am still recovering from the loss. Grief is not the main emotion now, nostalgia has taken over.
Yet, my heart still freezes when I think of the missed opportunities to learn about her past, the wisdom I haven’t inherited, or the traditional meals I have to learn from Google instead of by standing next to her in the kitchen.

Until next time, Nonna Francesca 🕊