Article by Sophia Murphy Art by Joy Chen
I'm taking the mac and cheese out of the colander and fixing it into my bowl as I get my drink and silverware ready. I am laughing and excited in anticipation of the movie we’re ready to watch. He walks over and sits down before me. I go into the freezer to grab something and the blast of cool air paralyzes me for a moment. A feeling comes back to me — one I’d known years before. Waiting for me is a bowl of junk food and her, ready to relax and immerse in whatever the television chooses to play. It’s around 8 or 9 pm and our pajamas are on, as we know this activity leads right into brushing teeth and then bedtime. The house is a little cold, but that is how they like it. My Nana is sitting on the couch in front of me with the television remote, waiting for me to come over. I’m no longer in Denver, I’m back on Holyoke Street, in a living room neither of us have been in since three years ago.
She had auburn hair, almost ginger, but she’d yell at you if you called it that, it was her stylist's fault.
Maureen Murphy grew up in the Boston area and was the youngest of three sisters. She met my Papa at the department store where they both worked, and married him at 19 years old and then had my father at 20. She always told me someone called her the street angel and a house devil, and whenever she'd tell me that, I could never disagree. She was stubborn, mean at times, angry, and forced me to eat mashed potatoes once — I’ve never tried them again.
One of my favorite nights in front of that television, sitting on that couch, was when we watched The Hangover. It was my 10-year-old cousin, my uncle, my Nana, and some other scattered family members on a random Saturday night. Indulging in the comedy of prostitutes, missing teeth, and endless swearing was one of the most unexpected moments of family bonding. But the best part was looking over at her dying laughing to the most crude scenes you never thought you’d witness with your grandma.
She raised three incredible children: my dad, my uncle, and my aunt. They all, of course, take on her most favorable and maybe least favorable qualities: stubbornness, anger, and standards set so high that you wouldn’t want to fail. But also humility and love that could prevail in the hardest moments. I always wanted to make her proud.
She had two iPads and played “4 Pics 1 Word” at the same time on both. She paid for the premium Candy Crush on those iPads too.
One night when I was fourteen years old, I snuck out of her window when I was sleeping over. I, of course, got caught from the left-open window and have never felt more guilty in my life. I thought that things would never be the same again, that she would never be able to forgive me. Being fourteen, you are being tested and prepped for the many life challenges that you will face ahead. The first time I had to take real accountability was with her the next day. I was bawling and bawling on the phone, just saying how sorry I was.
I knew she was not perfect. She would never fail to remind me, either with her callous comments or unnecessary judgment. But it was always mostly just funny to me. We were probably far apart enough in age that we both sought entertainment from the other. She probably thought I was ignorant and sensitive, and she was, of course, hard-headed and thought she knew everything, qualities I find myself starting to develop, hesitantly but definitely, with a little bit of pride because of where I know they come from. I was so unsure about all of my relationships in high school, so unsure of who I was and how I should act. Looking back, I never questioned our relationship, or myself, around her. We’d bicker often about politics, how to bake, haircuts, and any other pointless topics we decided to give the time of day.
When I was younger, she would take me and my cousins to the mall every summer for our birthdays; we’d come home after and have fashion shows. For her entire life, I knew she didn’t have much for herself, her children, or her grandchildren, but it was never obvious to me.
The thing I miss most about her is the excitement on her face when I would take the train to see her for the weekend and surprise her. She always greeted me with a radiant smile, and a “What are you doing here?!” I had a carton of eggs and a calm demeanor because I knew whatever high school drama, classwork stress, or boredom that was going on back home, I got to spend two nights with my wacky Nana and take things slow. It was the way life should be, hanging out with the person you love, doing sudokus, and getting to see my cousins or other relatives filing in and out to see her. To so many people in her life, it felt like she was the sun on Holyoke Street they all chose to orbit around.
I miss her love for my cousin's dog, Sadie, whom one time she accidentally fed Coco Puffs, thinking it was kibble.
My freshman year of college she got sick, so the distance I was already feeling from home became overwhelming from the anxiety I got from every text that she took a little too long to respond to, every question I had getting slightly unanswered on how she was doing; I started to feel horrible that I had left for college, mad at myself that I had gone so far from home, that I hadn’t called more in my first months there, that I didn’t visit her enough over the summer before I had left, I wanted to get on a plane every weekend that fall and go home and make everything okay but in some ways I was probably also trying to avoid it and save myself that if I went home it would not be the Nana I knew, if I went home it wouldn’t fix everything, so then I felt bad that I was too scared to see her like this and it would probably just be best to get over it and go because I’d regret it if I didn't, but I never went home before it was too late, and I’m still trying to not feel sad about that. Grief always tries its hardest to make room for guilt.
It was Thanksgiving Day, so I was finally home and I was back in Quincy with our family. She was too sick to come upstairs to eat with us, so it was time for me to go downstairs to her. The coward I was, I couldn't go alone, so I went with my brothers with unacknowledged intent, saying goodbye. She was talking to me and my brothers, and told us that she was dying soon. How could I not cry at that moment? I went off to the bathroom to collect myself and she called me a pussy to my brothers. This wasn’t time for our usual bickering, I just took it. We couldn’t butt heads anymore about stupid things, and this personality of hers was no longer entertaining to me because I couldn’t laugh and get her back by lecturing her on why that was offensive. I wanted to do nothing to make it harder for her, I just wanted her to be better. She passed away a week later.
Her contact is still pinned on my phone. It’s not practical, but it feels like I’m letting her go if I remove her from that space.
I frequently dream of her, and it’s always so normal to see her there. We’re sitting at the dinner table, she’s visiting me at college in a place she’s never actually been, she’s just there for casual moments, some more realistic than others, but it’s never shocking, it just feels right. Waking up is never sad, it's just disappointing and confusing. You think grief is supposed to feel insurmountable, but to me it just feels numbing and disassociating at times, having to act like I didn’t reunite with her merely in my own imagination and I wake up and there’s no real way to hug her, see her, feel her presence besides a fuzzy image you try to cling to from the night before. I hope she doesn’t think one day I don’t need her anymore and she’ll stop showing up.
I’d take the feeling of emptiness the next morning any day over never seeing her again at all.
Tears well up in my eyes as I close the freezer, and my body walks, but my mind stays frozen. I’ll never be back in front of her freezer lined with Drumsticks, frozen haddock, and the Eggo pancakes she bought for me because she knew I loved them. I’m back in Denver but my mind cannot help but crave that moment of hope when I first opened the freezer seconds ago, when the cold air transported me back, the blip of hope that I will turn around and see her sitting on that couch in her pink robe, sipping her second Amstel Light of the night, just like things were not too long ago.