Since I moved to Boston last July I have weathered two Hurricane’s, Irene and Sandy. When Irene hit I was scared. I had been living on my own for around two months and had only just turned 18. My family wasn’t far, but they weren’t close either, and so I was alone in a city that I barely knew preparing for a storm bigger than I had ever seen.
Thankfully, I was unscathed during Hurricane Irene. My father lost power for a while, but apart from that the people in my life were barely effected. Hurricane Sandy passed much the same, except this time I had my boyfriend and my best friend to keep me company. I filled the bathtub, bought non-perisables, and huddled in pajamas all day.
The wind was strong and the house shook, but I turned on a movie to drown it out thinking that if I was going to lose power I might as well enjoy it while I had it. I lost myself in books and researched creativity. In the evening I played a board game and by the time we finished Sandy had passed by.
I knew that we were on the edge of the storm, although there were definitely people around us who were effected, and secretly I was glad of it. My family, centered in Connecticut and Michigan, was also out of the way. My father lost power again, as tends to happen in the wooded neighborhood where he lives, but I thought that would be the worst of it.
This morning I woke up to a phone call at around 8:30 am. I had stayed up until two researching ways to teach creativity and was not ready to be awake, despite the blue sky that was poking through the gray and white clouds. But it was my stepmom’s name, and we don’t talk much on the phone, so I picked up assuming it would be something important.
My grandmother died last night.
She was one of Pennsylvannia’s five reported fatalities. My stepmother called me so that I wouldn’t find out on Facebook, as tends to happen on that side of the family. She also asked that I get in touch with my sister so that she too could find out from a person and not her newsfeed.
My father’s side of the family doesn’t stay in touch well. I hadn’t seen my grandmother in about five years and I can probably count on one or two hands the number of times I’ve seen her over all. I can’t remember the last time I talked to her on the phone, maybe Thanksgiving last year? Since I moved to Boston I’ve been meaning to go visit her in her home in Western MA, but I never did.
I found out, after a series of phone calls, that late last night my aunt had been driving my grandmother. It was in the middle of Hurricane Sandy in Pennsylvannia, where my aunt lives and where my grandmother was visiting. The car slipped, rolled of the road, and into a pond. My aunt got out and tried to get out my grandmother but to no avail.
My grandmothers death didn’t surprise me. She was 81 and had been suffering form Essential Tremmors since the last time I saw her, five years ago. But the fact that a storm I barely noticed caused my grandmother to died in a car submerged in a pond, that has turned my mind around.
Despite most of Pennsylvania being out of power, my family there, the family I haven’t talked to or seen in years, is working on donating her body to science in order to further Essential Tremors Research. My father has written on his blog, a cousin I haven’t seen or spoken with in over a decade has put pictures of my grandmother on Facebook, and a news article has been published online of the event with no descriptions of my grandmother and aunt except as “passengers.”
I’ve been wading through a slow series of emotions today as I grieve for the grandmother I barely knew. I started to write a song for her, spoke with my mother, cried into my boyfriend’s arms, and distracted myself by catching up on work and painting. For the moment, my mind is oddly blank.