Becky, My Granddaughter

[Content Warning: This story addresses themes of grief, intergenerational regret, and medical ignorance. It includes discussions of anger issues and guilt related to elderly care and loss.]

I wish I weren’t so ignorant.

The eleven-year-old me had bawled her eyes out, but the thought was only fully formed now, years later. Back then, reading the side effects of my grandmother’s drugs—blood spotting the eyes, dizziness, vomiting—had knocked the air from my lungs.

I clutched the medicine pamphlet, my small hands trembling.

Why didn’t my uncle and aunt stop her from drinking this poison?

I looked at my sleeping grandma, snoring lightly in her bed, the subtle rise and fall of her chest. She was the only mother I knew, my only safe space.

I was determined to expose the adults at home for trying to harm her.

I ran straight to the dinner table and confronted them. But they all laughed in my face. My uncle chuckled, prying the pamphlet from my hands as I struggled.

“You don’t understand, Becky,” he said slowly, tracing the words with his finger. “These side effects only happen to, like, one in a thousand people.”

That night, after the dust settled and the lecture on probabilities was over, I found my refuge. I curled into my grandmother’s arms in her big chair. She smelled of menthol ointment and the faint, sweet scent of her powder.

She, not really educated and almost as ignorant as I was about the medicine, simply held me. She smiled warmly down at my tear-stained face, her hand slowly patting my back. “What do you think, star?” she whispered. “Were they trying to poison your grandma?”

As I sat in my epidemiology class in college, this memory surfaced, putting a stupid, wistful smile on my face. The professor went on and on about why public education and awareness were so important. “If people knew, they would prevent and protect,” he said.

Why didn’t I know then? I was a child, the wrong age. But why didn’t the adults research deeper? Was it just nonchalance on their part?

She had diabetes and insomnia. She was stuck on beans and Lipton tea. Basically, still carbs and caffeine. So much caffeine in black tea for an elderly woman, but she drank it day and night and struggled with sleep. If only someone had done a simple search, they would have discovered Lipton black tea was full of caffeine.

Do I blame them? Or the doctor who I’m sure never asked about her diet before prescribing tons of sleeping pills to chug down? If he knew, wouldn’t he have asked her to stop?

As she kept on taking the drugs, she kept on ingesting the caffeine, canceling them out, trapped in a cycle none of us understood. My stomach twisted into a hard knot as the professor continued his lecture.

The period ended, and I signed my name up for the upcoming public awareness outreach. We would visit communities and educate people about hygiene and healthy lifestyle practices. I threw myself into school work like this, hoping to enlighten someone out there—maybe a child like me who was so ignorantly helpless, a child who wouldn’t have to lose a pillar in their life, or could at least spare them some pain.

I walked back to my dorm after my last class. Rain fell lightly, and I watched people skipping through the puddles. For a moment, my heart felt lighter. I loved laughter and finding joy in the simple things. When you have lost as much as I have, you learn that life is the most precious thing; we must love and respect it while we can.

I finally settled into my bed with a warm mug of cocoa. As the blanket wrapped around me, it reminded me of a familiar warmth.

Becky, wake up!” my roommate screamed, annoyingly poking my face and giggling. “We will be late if you don’t get up now!”

I grumbled, pulling the blanket over my head.

“I heard William will be there,” she said in a teasing tone.

My head snapped up. “Are you for real?”

She nodded. I immediately threw myself out of the bed.

William was the A1 crush of my life. He was perfect—caring, empathetic, always at programs like this, sweet with dogs and the elderly.

I hummed a song as I got ready. It was an old Edo song, “Mami Water,” one of the songs my grandmother used to listen to by Victor Uwaifo—a good blues musician, and I’m sure her crush, though she never said and I never asked.

She once told me I should record her voice or take a video of her so when she was gone, we could replay it. When she said it, fear gripped me. I never did. I was fifteen. Was it out of fear? Or out of the same nonchalance I accused my aunties and uncles of? I regret the lack of pictures and videos to this day. You never know what you have until you lose it. Did I become like my uncles and aunty? So complacent? Or was it just because I was a teenager? I have the pictures, but I can’t really remember her voice.

I hummed the song regardless, a slight guilt and a deep longing sitting in my gut.

We got in the van going to a remote community on the outskirts of Abuja, Nigeria. I was prepared, but more importantly, William was seated right in front of me.

Song after song played, and then a Justin Bieber song, “Love Yourself,” came on. It was another punch in the gut. As my coursemates sang along, their voices faded into the background, and the picture of my grandmother lying in her hospital bed surfaced in my mind.

She was singing that song.

It had been one of my favorites back then. I didn’t have a phone when I was thirteen, so her phone was where I kept all the songs I loved. “Love Yourself” was one of them. I played it so much, she also started singing it with me.

Did she learn it because I played it a lot, or did she learn it just so she could share something with her precious granddaughter?

I used to ask her if she loved me more than all my other cousins. Since I was a child, I’d always had a knack for pulling myself down, a habit I’d learned and one she couldn’t stop, because she kept on reassuring me I was loved, so, so much. My unfilial younger self always pushed and pushed to gain her sympathy and love, and I would say really stupid, mean things… things I’m ashamed to recall. And she would soothe me, never once reporting me to my uncle or aunt, who would have definitely whooped me.

I wish she had. I wish they did.

How could I have said I wanted to run away from home? I got so angry I hit her wardrobe, putting a crack in the wood. I had anger issues. I still do. I remember begging her, my voice thick with tears, not to tell my uncle and aunt. She was silent—or maybe she said she wouldn’t. I can’t remember. I rubbed my head in the van, trying to grasp the exact sound of her voice in that moment, but it was gone. All I knew for certain was that she never told them.

“Becky, have a headache already?” Susan, my roommate, asked.

I nodded. “Yes.” She passed me a bottle of water.

We arrived at the location and set up our stand. In no time, the area was packed. We sang the catchy songs we’d made up in class to help people remember things clearly. I always paid more attention to the elderly; they deserved so much care. I treated them as an extension of my grandma, wishing mine were still alive so I could show her the care she deserved, ease her pain, and make sure she knew she was the most important person to me. She still is.

After the program, and several lingering stares from William, we were done.

An elderly woman came up to us, offering mangoes to thank us. We cheerfully accepted. I bit into mine immediately after washing it, the only one in our entire company eating with such eagerness. Yes, there is a reason.

After an incident, I always gave old people things if they asked, and I received their gifts with equal fervor, hoping to ease the feeling of shame and guilt I carry from my grandmother.

She had just returned from the hospital after having her cervix checked. They were talking about it, and I was easily irritated, grossed out by things like that, and it really messed with me. Then she turned to me and asked, “Please, give me just a small taste of your noodles.”

And I said no. Because I felt irritated. She didn’t nag.

But when I was done eating, she looked at me and said, quietly, “I asked you for just a bite of your food, and you said no.”

I felt like shit. I felt so stupid. I felt like the biggest asshole in the world. I had failed her in that moment. I wish I could go back with the knowledge I have now: to set alarms for her meds so she didn’t forget like she usually did. My uncle or aunt never did, despite her fear that she’d forgotten or had taken an overdose.

I wish I had hugged her more, taken pictures of the two of us, kissed her more. I wish I had stopped her from drinking more black tea. I wish I weren’t so ignorant. I wish I had been smarter.

But when I thought of the other times, the times I would kiss her cheeks, hug her tightly; the times she would call me “baby,” defend me like a hawk, and support me unconditionally; the times I cried whenever she went for a check-up, terrified another sickness had arisen—the balance felt different. She once said, “I’m fine, I won’t die,” just to comfort me as I sobbed.

I hope she doesn’t count that noodles incident, but all these other moments. I hope she knows I loved her more than life itself.

The mango was sweet on my tongue, a gift from a grandmother to a granddaughter, an acceptance I could only receive now. I looked at the elderly woman, her work-worn hands, her warm smile, and I saw my own grandmother in her. I saw all the love I still carried, all the lessons learned too late, and the person I was now trying to become because of her.

I wish I weren’t so ignorant.