Dearest Reader,
This week would’ve marked my grandma Dorothy’s 93rd birthday. She was in her 80s when she died, a very respectable run. When I was a little girl, she liked crosswords and cozy mysteries and puzzles and word games, and she liked to be outside, walking or planting flowers or working on one of her little trails through the woods by her house. She once told me when she couldn’t sleep, she liked to go sit on the porch in just her nightshirt and listen to the night sounds, and would sit there until she was very cold, then come back inside and cozy up in bed, and she’d fall right to sleep. She used to serve her grandkids hot cocoa or tea, and graham crackers with frosting, or prepackaged snack cakes that she kept stocked in an old ice cream bucket.
The last few years of her life saw a steep decline into dementia, but she was fortunate in that it didn’t leave her anxious or angry. She had diabetes for the latter half of her life, and for many years it was well managed through limiting sugar intake and oral medication. Then when she moved into an elder care facility, she ate the same things that everyone else ate, starch-heavy and with dessert at every meal, and suddenly insulin injections were needed to manage her blood sugar. Over the following months, there appeared to be a sharp acceleration in diabetes-related nerve damage and circulatory damage, as well as rapid progression of dementia. Within a few years, she’d developed diabetic ulcers that wouldn’t heal, had to have one leg amputated below the knee, and was on her way to losing the other leg but ended up succumbing to kidney failure first.
Kidney failure, we were told, is not a bad way to go. The last day of her life, all her kids were with her, and most of her grandkids and some of her great-grandkids. Her awareness of what was happening in the room seemed to fade in and out, and sometimes she was having mumbled conversations with people we couldn’t see. But other times she was quite present, and delighted that we were with her, and she even laughed and made jokes with us. At one point she got very itchy – this happens as kidney failure progresses and toxins start building up in the blood – and she was given a little morphine, which helped. And then a few hours later, her breathing slowed and got labored, and we held her hands and told her we loved her. And away she went.
In the days that followed and within the grieving, I found that I could hold onto the vivid sense memory of my hand in hers, the warmth of her skin and the shape of her fingers and the curved edges of her fingernails. She had a big frumpy coat with large pockets that always held a few crumpled tissues, and when we were little and spending time outside together, she would say, “Your hands must be so cold! You should warm them up in my pockets.” And you’d put your little hand in Grandma’s coat pocket, and she would curl her warm hand around yours. And you’d be warm through and through.
I wish I could give that feeling to all the world. Whoever you are, reading this now, I wish I could take your hand with kindness and curl my warm fingers around yours, and you would feel safe and cozy and loved. We’re made to love, you know, but we also teach each other how to go about it. There’s so much I learned from her about how to love, kindly and with humor, taking joy in giving and in the simple treasure of being alive in the world. So: happy birthday, Grandma. I miss you.
On to the book review:
I recently signed up for NetGalley and got the advance copy of the first five chapters of Husband Material by Alexis Hall. And then I promptly had a host of unlikely technology problems so that I didn’t managed to log back in to deliver my review for three weeks, and Reader, I am sincerely embarrassed by that. If ever you find that you’re beating yourself up with the phrase, “For god’s sake, why can’t I just…” then you and I are kindred spirits.
Husband Material starts off with a bang, or rather with a crocheted vulva hat and a quick reintroduction of many favorite characters from the previous book, Boyfriend Material. The book is again written in first person from Luc’s perspective, and the voice and persona are entirely consistent with the Luc we know and love. Likewise, Oliver is so perfectly Oliver, from the first articulate and anxious chain of texts. Within the first five chapters, we’ve got top-notch banter, a spectacular joke-misfire with Alex Twaddle and the evolution of Rhys Jones Bowen as the world’s most out of touch social media influencer; vegan kitchen misadventures and an “I like you” that is beyond sexy; drama brewing for Bridget that for once doesn’t involve a publishing disaster; and a realistic picture of a healthy, well-developed relationship that is two years along, with main characters who have grown and matured but are still carrying some unresolved baggage from loose ends familiar from the first book. This was such a delight, and I can’t wait for the book to release in August – definitely going to be a “stock up on favorite snacks and take the day off work because ain’t nothing else happening today” kind of release day.
Husband Material is available for preorder and releases on August 2, 2022. (And if you haven’t yet read Boyfriend Material, I highly recommend you do so at the earliest opportunity.) You can find Alexis Hall at quicunquevult.com.
With love,
Beas
A very touching tribute to your grandmother.
We need more Dorothy’s in the world!
Alex Twaddle… what a fantastic fictitious name.