That time period when she lived in a regular rental was just violence and stupidness, Grandma says. Her brother ended up back with them until he wound up in Wallaceburg. Her husband and her were fighting a lot.
So she’d rather not talk about it today.
She asks me, if I am ok, because my voice is off. I’m not really, and she can sense it. I tell her I’m just tired from a long day yesterday. I had a funeral, of sorts, well a celebration of life, more like it. It took a lot out of me.
I ask her if she wants to tell me about something good that happened in her life instead. She just laughs. “I’m trying to think,” she says, and silence pervades for the next 2 minutes. “Huh, that’s pretty sad, eh?” she laments.
“It’s good I beat cancer three times,” her only response. She can’t think of any good times in her whole life because they are so sparse and infrequent. The memories just don’t come easily for her.
Her oldest grandson interrupts to ask about items to throw out from the fridge, him taking the initiative to clean the fridge without being asked. A miracle of sorts.
She starts to list concerts she’s seen when pressed with a prompt about concerts or festivals or fun times with her husband. Rush with Tony, April Wine, U2 with her husband at the CNE one year, blues festival every year when the kids were small. She would meet up with her husband and it would be just him and her, rocking out with the kids.
The dogs start barking excessively from someone walking in the door. “Ode, shut up!” Grandma yells. “I had you all to the point of no barking, now you’re all barking your faces off again.”
She’s kind of in a mood today because the youngest grandson was fighting with her this morning, she confesses. Just the usual. Someone emptied the weed bag last night while she was sleeping, and tore the towel bar off the wall in the bathroom, an action she says was done on purpose.
Her and the older grandson begin talking about organizing and cleaning the craft room in advance of housing coming to fix the window. We had discussed the different repairs at the housing meeting. Grandma says she will never understand how they can mess up the house and not leave her the ability to make money for the family. The craft room has been overrun for a while. Her now working on the kitchen table where the boys and their friends destroy it, inadvertently in their carelessness.
Grandma asks about the weather tomorrow, wondering whether she can do laundry and hang it. They are working together with one of the oldest boys friends, cleaning the house all evening.
This is what creating this book with Grandma has looked like. Slow and deliberate. Some days, we do nothing but talk, and I take no notes. We decided to wait to cover early childhood last, working our way older from teenagehood on. Collecting a story a day, when she felt up to it, which she mostly did.
When she first found out I was a writer, she told me about wanting to write a book. I didn’t think much of it, me more of a content and nonfiction writer than a writer who writes books and stories. I didn’t know her story or her life yet. She brought it up to me several subsequent times, and I just thought, yes, she should write a book. Her life story needs to be to told. People need to know what happened to Indigenous people in this country, and how the intergenerational effects linger. But didn’t connect that to me actually writing her book.
As we became closer, one day she broached the subject. I was flattered she had chosen me, but had my doubts I could write it. That I should write it. That I was even the right person. I asked her time to think about it.
One day, while working on a genogram family tree for my classes, I thought, maybe I should map out Grandma’s family. The mapping brought out loads of stories, many I captured on recording, and led to us discovering she was related to royalty. It solidified my resolve to actually write this book. She had trust in me. We had spent six years talking every day for at least an hour. I knew her as well as anyone could. Her life story needed to get out, and she did not have the capacity to do it herself.
I had just finished my first novel, an auto-fiction of sorts, and was rolling with creativity to begin my next project. I had time off of school and work, so I decided it was time to try. We began writing that night. Me taking notes over the phone while she narrated her life, piece by piece.
“The process has been therapeutic in some ways,” she says to me one day. “We heal our ancestors when we do this work.” And I could feel the weight of the stories being told and recorded fall off her. Some were difficult to tell. Some were filled with laughter as she told them, even traumatic events. Natives have to have a good sense of humour, she always tells me, to get through life.
I still feel unworthy of telling her story, immersing myself into trying to get the pieces right. Reading each chapter to her as I finish it, to get her thoughts, missing pieces, and approval. The editing process will be thorough. She has final say on everything that goes out.
Maybe telling someone’s story isn’t about being worthy of it. Maybe it’s enough that she feels heard and happy with the process.
So we keep going. One story at a time.
And sometimes, when there isn’t a story, we just talk.
Who is the person in your life whose story you wish more people could hear?
Know someone whose story deserves to be heard? Restack this for them. ❤️
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