Personal Narrative: My Grandparent's Eulogy

If you have ever been tasked to write and present a Eulogy for a loved one you know, it can be overwhelming. I wrote both of my grandparent’s Eulogies within a four months period. It has been one of the worst years if not the worse year of my life. I experienced all seven human emotions, but the one I can't seem to break away from is anger. It’s like having the same nightmare every night and waking up feeling the same way you felt the day before. Not happy or sad, just mad. Many times I have to take a step back and check myself more often these days, so I don’t lose my shit. The sad truth of the matter is that the life I was accustomed to no longer existed.

Now like most families my family is not perfect by any means, and I admit that

It ’ s next to impossible to do “normal” things like girls ’ night out and date night without the urge to scream. My grandmother is dying. How in the hell was I expected to kick back and throw one back?

Having a dying grandparent means you have to push through the guilt of feeling joy and happiness because you know that your grandmother expects nothing less. There is no rulebook or play-by-play list that you can refer to on the days when the panic and rage are so raw that you think you might lose your mind. And while your friends do their best to sympathize with you, no one understands the sheer desperation that always threatens to bubble over.

A dying grandparent means facing my mortality with new eyes. In the final weeks of my grams illness, I’d often look at my children and worry that my death would burden them in the same way. I worried that the fear and terror I felt in these last months would be their journey someday when their father and I face our health issues. I wondered if I could be strong for them. I pray that I could meet death with the grace and elegance as my grandmother showed near the end. Realizing, that I, too, will someday be the dying