It was in that same year, 2002, that I watched my grandmother succumb to a lengthy battle with ovarian cancer. My grandmother worked as an LPN for nearly twenty years, and it often said in my family that I took after her in more ways than just physically:; I had inherited her work ethic and her sunny disposition, her tendency to always look on the bright side of life even when things got rough. I was her firstborn granddaughter, and we were very close; growing up, I could remember her crispy-pressed scrubs that always smelled like a combination of starch and her favorite perfume, and the hard candies she kept in her pockets, both for her patients and for me.
Unfortunately, her cancer went undetected for many years. I always wondered why, as an LPN, she wasn’t diagnosed sooner, why none of us knew until it had spread to her abdomen. But it had always been my grandmother’s way to look after everyone first and herself second. It was that selfless dedication that had inspired her to go to nursing school, a poor, single mother raising four children in the heart of one of Los Angeles’ toughest neighborhoods. It was that selfless dedication that inspired me, and when my grandmother went into hospice, I saw the same selfless dedication mirrored
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We all felt the loss of her warmth and presence keenly, but none more than my mother, who suffered through an intense period of depression in the months following. This was my first experience with death, and I can clearly remember the sadness and confusion I felt during and after my grandmother’s funeral. Trying to come to grips with losing my grandmother was difficult enough, but I found myself having to take on the responsibilities my mother’s depression had rendered her unable to do. Though my mother eventually recovered, I had no idea at the time that watching her struggling with depression would be an augury for my own personal battles with