The Matriarch of My Family Died

I was kneading dough for brunch the day after Thanksgiving when my mom called with the news. "She’s gone." That was all she had to say. I murmured my condolences to my mother, who just lost her mother, then I hung up the phone, ran to my room, crumbling onto the bed. I was shocked at the level of grief that hit me like a giant wave, making an impact with my childhood memories. Mixing up my recollections of Alaskan summers, seafood feasts, boat rides in the rain, family fights, and so much more. I knew this day was coming, she was ill for a while before she finally let go. So why wasn't I more prepared? I guess you can never be prepared for how grief will run through you, stealing your resolve and courage.

“Were you close with your grandmother?” My therapist asked me a couple weeks later when I was still trying to process the enormity of my grief. The answer is a resounding no. Not recently, and I am not sure I ever was extremely close to her. In fact, I have not even spoken to her for probably three years. Perhaps the lack of affection between my grandmother and me is the root of the deep grief growing inside me. Perhaps I'm grieving for the relationship we never had? Initially, I felt guilty for grieving her, as if I didn't deserve to be sad over losing someone I hadn't made an effort to maintain a relationship with.

The more I digest this grief the more I am coming to terms with it’s origin. Like many deep intense emotions, grief has layers. Like an onion, you peel back one layer of meaning and insight from your grief to find a new, fresh one underneath, ready for processing. It has been four months since her death, and I am still processing these different layers. My grandmother’s most influential time in my life was when I was a child. My Native Alaskan heritage comes entirely from my grandmother; everyone else in my bloodline is white.

My tie to my Native Alaskan Indian heritage through my grandmother was one of the strongest connections to her. This wasn't just the card in my wallet declaring my blood percentage; it was the actual culture instilled in me since childhood. You do not realize how culture is part of your life as a child until you are grown and blessed with the skill of hindsight. My grandmother was Tsimshian and Athabascan, ‘NOT an Eskimo,” as she would vehemently exclaim when our ancestry was brought up. As a 10-year-old trying to absorb her knowledge and not get yelled at for cleaning crabs that wrong way, I did not really get what the difference was.  Those were the times I got to know my grandmother the most. When she was sober and preparing food. I would go stay with her for a week or two at a time in a 100-year-old house on an island in Alaska away from modern civilization, only reachable by boat or float plane. To this day this family house stands off grid, powered in the evening by a generator, water in the pipes thanks to the creek, and a toilet that only flushes when you pour a bucket of collected rainwater into it (then it is simply flushing your excrement onto the beach to be picked up by the next tide).

As a child, my time with my grandmother was spent on that island, away from TV and city distractions. There were about six houses out there, all connected by a rickety elevated boardwalk that was always in need of repair somewhere along the path. The smell of wet moss, ferns, skunk cabbage, sea-salt, and diesel hung in the air everywhere you went. This area of Alaska is a rainforest, so it is always perpetually wet. Meaning that I would drive grandma crazy tracking in mud and wet footprints daily.  As a kid I would alternate from wanting my grandmother’s attention and wisdom to fearing her and hoping I could stay out of sight for a full day.  She had a way of not being mean, but making you feel unwelcome. I would spend days out on the island going fishing on the dock for pogies, bathing in the glacial waterfall in the woods, picking berries, kayaking, digging up cockles, or just waiting for the rain to pass. Grandma would take me to deep saltwater fish for halibut and rockfish, crabbing, camping, and hiking. My love of nature and outdoor activities comes from these trips with her. She was hardcore in her hunting and fishing abilities but would always have her makeup and hair perfect while in the Alaska wilderness. These are core values that are engrained in my being. I have come to terms with grieving for the loss of these attributes.

As I've processed the loss of this woman and how she helped build my identity, I've also recently developed an understanding of generational trauma. My family’s history is laden with severe traumas from racism to sexual assault. These traumas are embedded into my mental health, my core beliefs, and my character. In my grief I have come to consider how all the knowledge of these traumas that my flesh and blood have survived affect me. Knowing that those before me survived terrible injustices has grounded me in my pursuit of a peaceful successful life, while also embedding anxiety, fear, and perfectionism into my being. This is a concept that I have not been willing to face and explore until this grieving process. Before I followed the example of other family members and swept these traumas under the rug and pretended like they didn’t happen. When I face all that my grandmother was, I must face the generational trauma she carried and handed down to us. This is a difficult pill to swallow but one that is necessary to help process my grief.

Grandma was truly a matriarch in our family, as most Native Alaskan grandmas are. We center our families around our maternal grandmothers, their kitchen, their recipes, their traditions, their rules, and their stories. Aunties and great aunties are important to guiding the younger generations as well. When I was planning my dream Alaskan wedding, it was her and my aunties cooking I wanted to celebrate with. They made a reception feast of stuffed king salmon, crab puffs, shrimp fried rice, and shrimp salad. Her love of Alaskan food will always live on through all of us: crunchy popping shrimp eggs in the fried rice, Dungeness crab in every form, briny fish head soup, salty dried seaweed chips, sweet smokey salmon candy, salmon dip, bear jerky, and chicken fried deer steaks.

Grandma taught me how to not just love dogs but to utilize them for a job such as bear protection. She embedded the concept in my mind that you did not go anywhere without your dog, they are simply an extension of yourself. My career as a veterinarian stemmed from a coexistence with dogs that I grew up with while staying with my grandma.

Going back to my therapist’s question, I may not have been close to my grandmother with an intimate one on one relationship, but emotionally and mentally, she is a part of me. Her native subsistence lifestyle, culinary skills, knowledge of nature, love of animals, her traumas, our Indian heritage and history, her mental health struggles, and much more is all part of my personal foundation that I have built my life upon. She is one of the roots that supports my tree of life. And I am grieving for the loss of the vitality of that root. But the stability and strength from it/her is still there and will always be a part of me and live on in children.