Lullabies my grandmother sings to me

Abstract

Lullabies My Grandmother Sings to Me is about my grandmother, Millicent Arand. One of my more humorous memories of her comes from when I was very little, and my sister and I were staying at my grandma’s house overnight. She sat in a chair next to us and started to sing us a song to get us to sleep. We had clearly worn her out, because she slowly nodded off in her chair while my sister and I watched, fully awake.

Sadly, a few years later my grandmother would be diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease, and most of my memories of her come from this period of cognitive decline. It is incredibly tragic to watch as someone who dedicated their life to raising her own children and grandchildren forget their names, and out of all of us I can imagine it was hardest for my Grandmother.

I had originally thought to title this piece “Lullabies that I Sing to My Grandchildren”, and have it depict the story from her perspective, but this is ultimately not my story to tell, nor do I think I could depict this if it was. Instead, it is of my grappling with how to remember my grandmother, and the complex emotions with her passing. Having watched her suffer so, it came with a feeling of relief for her freedom, along with feelings of this loss. My happy memories of her as a young child are to some degree tarnished by the sadness of her final few years. Over the course of this piece, I struggle to remember the Millie from the early years of my life, but the emotional baggage repeatedly breaks up and suppresses these memories, inducing an emotional numbness. From this point the memories are rebuilt and liberated, and they exist in my mind undiluted and happy.