Just thinking about my grandmother who was born in the 1930s, whose best friend in elementary school disappeared when US citizens of Japanese heritage were forced into camps during WWII, and who endured bullying and social stigma because her parents were divorced.
My grandma lived through the Depression, WWII, McCarthyism, Korean War, Cuban Missile Crisis, Civil Rights, Kent State, Vietnam, Cold War and Gulf War. Through it all, she was a strong, independent, working woman who dared to leave her abusive, alcoholic husband during the “Mad Men” era of the 1960s when no-fault divorce didn’t exist and women couldn’t even get credit cards on their own.
And I’m thinking about how I phoned my grandmother the morning of 9/11 in tears, holding my 1-year-old firstborn daughter, watching live TV after one Trade Center tower & then another fell. It felt like the whole world was falling down. It was too deeply, profoundly horrifying to process.
Yet Gma C seemed so chill, so “yeah, shit happens…” Not that she made light of things but at that point she’d spent 70 years dealing with an endless onslaught of tragic personal and world events and this was just one more.
In a weird way, it was comforting. Not comforting in a “this too shall pass” sort of way, because it never really passes, but comforting with a clarity of purpose: You’re either a person who does shitty things or you’re a person who tries to cope & help others cope with shitty things. Such is life.
~ J.L. Hilton
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