Grief and Graduation
When Grandma was first diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, the doctors said she may have two years to live, a hopeful estimation we clung to in the initial weeks. “Just let her see Jake graduate,” we all prayed.
Two and a half years have passed since she died, and Jake, my younger brother, is a senior in high school, only two weeks away from graduating during a global pandemic. This is not how we imagined the end to his secondary education when speaking of a future with Grandma.
It’s strange. I’ve wondered a few times what life would be like for her right now in the midst of the coronavirus if she were alive.
Grandma Booher on Christmas Day, 2013. Kodak Portra, my first roll of color film.
The suffering she experienced in the seven weeks between diagnosis and death was enough to see that living two more years would have been excruciating for her, as well as emotionally and physically exhausting for my mom and grandpa.
If she were here, the emotional and mental toll of the cancer would have increased, with the extended precautions and new worries, the treatments and doctor visits taken alone. There would be no graduation ceremony for her to attend, and seeing Jake in person may have even been impossible, too great a risk.
Yet, honestly, that’s not where my mind has gone.
Jake at the skatepark in Greencastle, Indiana, Fall 2015. Diana F+ camera.
Every time I’ve thought about it I’ve seen her healthy, sitting in her brown recliner in the family room. She wasn’t sick or undergoing treatment. There she was restored, healed, sun streaming through the window behind her, illuminating her outline—a saint.
Though there will be no graduation ceremony to attend—an event once held out as a goal, vague and distant, yet certain to come (we thought)—there will be a celebration of who Jake is becoming and all the moments between then and now.
A driver’s test passed. An apology for a wrong done. A skateboard trick landed. An extension of empathy.
And although Grandma did not make it to Jake’s graduation, her spirit will be there: in the good she saw in my brother as he wrestled through difficult years, in the ties we still have as a family, in the joyful celebration of growth amidst trial.