Through Her Six Pairs of Glasses: Grieving The Loss of My Schizophrenic Grandmother

Grief feels like wearing glasses with the wrong prescription. When you wear them, everything seems blurry and sharp all at once. You see figures that are soft around the edges yet unbearably clear. You become convinced you’re in a surreal space, frozen, seeing everything around you disoriented.

Ever since my grandmother passed away, I’ve been walking through life wearing grief and looking at the world through its lens. Her absence is a constant filter, reshaping every memory, every sensation, every feeling. Yet, oddly, when she passed, I asked for nothing of hers but six pairs of glasses. Six pairs of glasses that hugged her face, helped her see and gave me back some measure of vision. Not just the sight of who she was as a mother, daughter, or sister, but the many versions of her I knew, others knew, and only she knew.

Teacher Illis. That’s what they called her in Gouyave. A fishing town on the western coast of Grenada, her name carried weight. She wasn’t just my Granny; she was a beacon, an institution, living history. Her life was a testament of survival, and that survival through her life began to be attached to voices. The woman who taught a generation of children, who walked the roads of her village with her modest skirts, sensible shoes, thick rimmed glasses, and rosary…