Anamnesis

Once my grandfather died, death was a lingering thing, tainting sunny memories with the haze of a dark storm. I felt it now. I understood the pattern of life. But not through this new path; rather, the absence of the old.

At family gatherings, there was an empty seat. When I gave up on violin, there wasn't a music partner to leave. Life simply continued without him, ebbed on. My grandfather was ashes in the earth, and I a soul above.

A few months prior, I overheard a conversation between him and my mother. He was whispering final messages to her, speaking about his son - my dad - and then his four grandchildren. In a weary voice, he said, "I don't want them to remember me like this."

And it stuck.

I was eleven. My grandfather was eighty-three. To this day I remember him as he was in those final months, weak, thin, and painfully clinging to the ones he'd leave behind. The voice I recall in my head is not low and bubbly, but trembling, and it says that he is tired, that he fears for his children. It speaks in sickness.

He was once the man who’d teach us how to fish and drive us from school when we caught the flu, but that is a faded image. I can barely summon his old appearance to mind, and when I look at early photographs of us, I wonder how he was for so long different.

I've unconsciously done exactly what he did not wish. Day after day. And as much as I try, I can't shift at all.

Numerous times, I asked myself, why hadn't I done more when I had the chance, before the disease overtook him? Why didn't I nudge my parents to visit?

You were young, a part of me always answered. You didn't know better; you did the best you could.

Yet when his wife, my grandmother, died that same spring, I couldn’t accept that as true.

We'd called her Fifi, and him Pop-Pop. For 51 years they were a duo, and for my life they were a given. Their yellow house was full of microwavable meals and endless TV; it was where my sister and I went during the summer and begged to stay on days off. Often we'd hold fashion shows, wearing stained princess dresses hung in the office and twirling before our grandparents' eyes. When we got bored of that, we'd listen to Pop-Pop play his banjo, and after that, open a bag of Cheese Puffs for a movie night with Fifi.

They were two warm, welcoming faces threaded throughout the quilt of my life. And when they passed, it shattered me.

I didn’t really show my grief to others; the tears and the aches came mostly when I was alone. Once, I was sitting on the carpet with my dog, trying to find the song itching at my memory. It ended up being “Greensleeves,” and with a jolt I realized that it was the song I always heard on Fifi’s kid piano, bought for us from a neighborhood garage sale. Drops shimmered in my eyes. Almost unasked for, memories of her, of Pop-Pop, began to flash before me, blurs of regret and shock like the ones which had struck when my dad had croaked, “Fifi died.” Soon, the memories piled into a tower higher than I could climb, until humiliation filled me and I shoved them all away. I guess I thought that by doing so, the weight would vanish.

It didn’t.

“Bridget,” says my mom from the kitchen, in the fall. “Do you want to make Pink Stuff as a surprise for Dad?”

I look up from my book and soften. Pink Stuff was Fifi's staple, found in a newspaper decades ago and rebranded based on what her children called it. Sweet cherry pie filling, gooey mini marshmallows, fresh Cool Whip and condensed milk, all mixed, frozen, and served after dinner. Delicious, really. And at family gatherings, the dessert.

Every grandkid would bug Fifi before the meal, tugging on her maroon sweater and exclaiming in high-pitched voices, “did you make Pink Stuff?”

“Yes,” she would reply, rolling her eyes but clearly amused. Then she would open the freezer and expose the special glass bowl within. We'd peek over her arm, practically drooling at the pale-pink mountain, until she’d shoo us away. “You can’t have any until later!”

Fifi was an inspiring woman. Beneath the sass and stubbornness, she had a tender heart poured out in the world. She took care of her husband for months after his diagnosis, helping him bathe and encouraging him to eat. And when she wasn’t needed, she tended to the wild garden in her backyard. I distinctly remember the coldness of the living room window while I pressed my nose against it, and gazing in awe as Fifi waded through bees and watered their coneflowers. She was never dissuaded or struck by hesitation. She simply joined in the frenzy of nature, balanced herself with the world. Every spider she found in the house was named Charlotte, after the book, and carefully returned to the bushes. Every bird that graced her porch was pointed out and named, and the many injured animals found by the road were sheltered under her wing. But her compassion did not stop there. Multiple times I’d hear of her volunteering experiences, like the conversations she had with the old neighbor she drove around. And as much as she contributed, Fifi never took money for her generosity. Her house was creaky and her clothes worn, but that was the life she was happy in. It was the one she shared with those she loved.

In fact, one of the last stories I have of her and Pop-Pop, before things got bad, was an instance of lack of self concern. She’d hit her head in the basement, but instead of calling my dad for a ride to the hospital, she’d placed a cloth on her head and adamantly ignored the wound. She’d told her husband she was fine, that she didn’t need help. It was only later, when the blood kept running, that she took it back and asked him to call their son. My grandfather, who had for months been under her care, looked her firmly in the eye and responded, “Baby, I already did.”

His favorite song was “Amazing Grace.” After his funeral, my dad invited Fifi to watch live bag-pipers with the family. He didn’t give many details. But after the finale, when the musicians surprised everyone and played my grandpa’s song, she understood. That was the first and last time I saw my grandmother cry, because not long after that, she was gone.

It was an accident. A thrust on the gas instead of the breaks, and a direct collision with the parking lot post. It wasn’t supposed to happen. It hadn’t even been two months since her husband’s death. She’d known how to drive for decades, yet in that one moment, she’d slipped….

In books, the first thing a character says when their loved one dies is simply “no.” The reaction is predictable, usually choked out after receiving an emotional goodbye. I didn’t get such a moment. I could have if I’d known. Instead of staying with my friends as my grandmother left my dad’s birthday party, I could have paused to give her a hug. I could have uttered a farewell. But I didn’t. I hadn’t. And still, fate took what it wished.

So it came to be that when I heard the news, “no” was the only word I could form. Not enough time had passed to cry; I was just in shock. Immobilized by disbelief. That’s the only truth in those stories, I guess. That none of us are prepared to let go.

I return my gaze to my mom, who’s waiting expectantly before me, her question hovering in the air. Pink Stuff. How long has it been since I’ve tasted it? Had Fifi even made the dessert after Pop-Pop died? I don’t know. Everything that spring was foggy and somber. I hadn’t really tried to look back. But I did know that Fifi was my Dad’s mother, and no matter what I felt, her death had hit him the hardest. With Pink Stuff, we could surprise him, just as he had her. It wouldn’t heal things - nothing ever could - but it was something. A sort of gift. “Yeah,” I nod. “We can make it. We can try.”

My mom smiles. “Just keep it a secret.”

“I will.”

The night before Thanksgiving, we take out a parched white note card. On it is scribbled, in Fifi's bold, all-caps handwriting, the treasured recipe. I stare at the letters, soaking in the image of my grandma writing this, of her hands on this paper. With a sigh, I place it against the kitchen wall, and after gathering the ingredients, my mom, sister and I begin to follow the steps.

It was weird at the beginning, being the one to mix the batter and to actually know the secret. Watching the mixture slowly thicken, and then as the cherries melted, their rosy color blossoming out. You would think that the act would make the recipe less exotic and special, but the truth is, I only feel… happy; as if this is just a normal part of the holiday. Every time I gaze down at the recipe coming together, I see it inside my grandparents’ freezer. In Fifi’s hands, as she walks over to the wooden, claw-legged table where my family is sitting. Then now, in my hands, being brought to life again.

On Thanksgiving, we show the Pink Stuff to my dad. He smiles, looking fondly at the mixture, and quietly says, “Thank you,” before giving us a hug. He doesn’t say anything else, but to me the words are enough. In that moment, we’re held together by memories resurfaced.

I didn’t realize it until later, but Pink Stuff was like a shift in the path. It guided me over a bridge I otherwise wouldn’t have crossed. Gradually, as the dessert was served and memories bubbled up, I let reality sink in. I listened to my dad and aunt while they told stories about Fifi and Pop-Pop and revisited old times. I shared my own when they arose. And though I was originally worried it would make me emotional, the empty seats actually grew distant. The new scene became natural.

In May, my eyes were clearer. I helped clean my grandparents’ house before it was put up for sale, and in June released my silent farewells. I went through the memory books Fifi had been filling since I was a baby, and laughed at the emails taped inside. They were always to my parents, informing them of their children’s adventures in the little yellow house. In one, Fifi wrote of how I’d stuck all her postal stamps on my body and flaunted them before her horrified face. In another, she warned my parents of the “inevitable future of eye-rolling.”

Through these such experiences, I began to understand that remembering was a continuation of love; an acceptance over burial. I loved my grandparents, and because of that their absence would always hurt. But now I had a choice of where that suffering laid. And I wanted to choose right.

After, whenever I made Pink Stuff, I thought of my grandparents. I still missed them deeply, but I was conscious of my grief. If it made me cry, smile, or laugh, then that was just what it was. Life, however merciless and finite, had provided me with the freedom to share my truth. This was one fractal of it, and I would not ignore that for anything.

Of course, when Pink Stuff resurfaced, the situation may never have been the same; I may not have been in that cozy yellow house or among the same people; I may not have been as naive, or burdened by the same pressures; and yet, when I prepared it, it was like I could shift back into my old body, with my grandparents beside me again.

Recipes really are strange things. Although everyone and everything surrounding them will change, they will always have this constant, reliable flavor and the ability to bring you back to cherished times. And Pink Stuff, well… it did just that. It was the gift Fifi had left us, to carry on when physical presence could not.

In one of her emails, my grandmother wrote, “These fun and innocent years past too quickly. We love and enjoy these kids and want them to remember Fun Times with Gramma Fifi, and Pop-Pop. All too soon they’ll be teenagers who’ll roll their eyes and cross their arms and sigh at how ignorant and unsophisticated we grownups are. (That too will pass.) I just want to make a record of this special time, with copies for their Memory Books.”

The email stands alone amidst the others, italicized and sent to her son, daughter, and stepdaughter late one night. At the top, there is written, “No response needed.” And at the bottom, there is no answer. The email was just one in a hundred, a small message tucked between pictures.

I found it for the first time when I was, in fact, a teenager. I had not expected it in the least; I’d been searching for a cheery quote or random photo, not a glimpse into my grandmother’s thoughts. But the thing is, the email didn’t surprise me either. This was the Fifi I knew. And although he didn’t write it - because he couldn’t quite work the computer, because he left most of his thoughts unsaid - I know this was my grandfather, too.

Our world is connected by a web of interactions. Some nudge others, many hide the doors left locked. And through it all, I’ve arrived here, with the echo of a late-night message playing inside my head. My reaction is more thought than action. It’s more of an idea the time spent with my grandparents has summoned. And what that is, what I want them both to know, is that I remember. I remember the difficulty and the sadness, the years of wordless embraces. I remember the way Pop-Pop tapped the glass door as we left, and how he would give his grandkids turns on his lap until the illness grew too strong. I remember the cheap coloring books Fifi bought, the chime of her bird call clocks and scuffed white sneakers, and how I was embarrassed she wore them at my school. I can remember the whole story, and where their lives’ pages intertwine and end, but I can also heave and sift back to the beginning as well.

There’s always life in a memory, if you look for it. There are always traces in the sand after the walker is gone. My grandparents’ deaths taught me what nothing else would: to embrace the impermanent, and hold on to what I can while it remains.

“No response needed,” is what Fifi wrote. But I don’t think that’s true.

If I could have responded, there would be an entire library of thoughts to release. Rivers of questions, emotions, and stories I’d spill out onto the keyboard and frantically stare at while awaiting a response. My life, since they left, and all the memories they took with them. But among those thoughts and queries, there is one thing which stands apart, that I would like to have said most of all.

And that is this:

Dear Fifi and Pop-Pop,

I’ve read your words.

And I remember.

I remember.

I remember.