Audio Transcript:

My grandmother Joan was, among many things: steady, dependable, and deeply kind. She loved antiques and laughed with her whole body. Each cackle would swell and bounce around the room, like the bubbles swirling in her ever-present glass of diet coke. I grew up in the same small town where my grandmother, my mother’s mother, and her people had lived for generations. Having been in the same place so long, many of the houses on our street were family houses, passed down as the next generation took their turn. 

For a house to change hands, there is a process of moving through the things someone leaves behind. My grandmother always seemed to find herself in this role, helping our family, friends, and neighbors die with dignity and ease, knowing she would handle whatever was left unfinished. Sometimes it was an obvious choice, like when my great grandmother moved into hospice. Others less so, like her neighbor Eva. I don’t know much about Eva, except that she had a sharp tongue and a closet full of negligees. When she got sick, my grandparents started helping her with little things like checking her mail and dropping off groceries. Eventually Eva asked my grandmother to clean out her house after she died. And so it went, year after year, house after house, sorting and spreading belongings to their new homes like ashes to the wind. My mother, my grandmother, and me.

In my teens, when my mother died, the thin veil between adolescence and adulthood ripped apart like brittle stitches – fraying everything. There was no closure, no joyful uncovering of antiques, no cleaning house. I lived amongst my mother’s estate – the china cabinet full of our ancestor’s own collections, the dishes not yet put away, my brother, my father, and me. My mother was young and, despite years of doing deathwork, she hadn’t left me a roadmap to follow. In lieu of a last will and testament, she left her own mother’s steadiness and full body laugh, a blue leather jacket, and her 1978 MGB convertible. I was coming of age ahead of time, but grandma was there, passing on what she knew of death to me.

I can still conjure up the softness of Mark’s drawl, describing the costumes he’d worn and friends he’d loved. Listening to Mark felt like coming home, the special reunion between queers who have lived with death as their neighbor. Like most queer men his age, Mark knew deathwork from living through the 1980’s AIDS Crisis. It wasn’t until years later, as part of Mark’s own end of life care, that I came to know him as family – someone who, like my grandmother, had cared for lovers, neighbors and friends in this particular way. Five queer friends cared for Mark and his belongings at the end of his life. I called my grandmother often in those weeks, sitting with Mark and cleaning out his apartment.

When my grandmother entered hospice in the spring of 2022, there was a familiar rhythm to it. It’s hard to describe, but it felt something like putting on the old t-shirt from the back of the drawer. That one you’ve worn so much that the fabric is thin, the shoulders and seams stretched by your own repetitive motions in and through it. We had talked about her death openly and often, having done this work together so many times. On the day my grandmother told me she was ready to start her transition towards death, I asked her, “is there anything you need from me while we do this together?” We both laughed a full body laugh as she told me, “you can clean out my apartment.”

This quilt includes shirts from my grandmother and mother, my own worn-out jean shorts, and the binding is Mark’s flannel.