Read on Twitter
When we laid my grandmother to rest in the early 1990s, I thought we had nothing in common.
She was quiet, proper and devout. I barely remember her smiling. I was loud, awkward, chunky and contrarian. I always suspected she didn’t like me much. 1/ https://twitter.com/argusjellis/status/1337837240312094722
She was quiet, proper and devout. I barely remember her smiling. I was loud, awkward, chunky and contrarian. I always suspected she didn’t like me much. 1/ https://twitter.com/argusjellis/status/1337837240312094722
A few years after she died, our garage caught fire. Some of her stuff was stored in there. Most of it was lost. Among the surviving artifacts was a type-written script from the 1920s, on thin white paper with a blue binding at the top. 2/
I was in high school by then. I’d given up on sports and had settled into drama, music, speech and debate. I knew what the script was. It was a humorous interp piece. I’d even heard it performed at a regional competition. 3/
I asked my dad about it. “Oh, yeah,” he said. “She used to do speeches like that.”
My mind was blown. I could scarcely imagine her talking across a living room, let alone cracking jokes loudly for competition. Yet here was proof that she and I were part of the same club. 4/
My mind was blown. I could scarcely imagine her talking across a living room, let alone cracking jokes loudly for competition. Yet here was proof that she and I were part of the same club. 4/
I never heard her play piano in person, but there are recordings. She played beautifully. She played to pass the time well into her adult life, the way I play guitar now. She never heard me play or saw me act. She never saw a debate round. 5/
I was never a state champion debater, but I was good. My peers voted me into a Mundt Award my senior year, and my coach teared up introducing me. Winning arguments on both sides prepared me for journalism; speech, music and theater prepared me for communications in general. 6/
That she died before I knew her - before she knew me - is still tragic 30 years on. It’s also tragic that my mom's mom and dad died before I was old enough to ask them how they made nine kids in a 2-bedroom house without the kids noticing. I never even met that grandmother. 7/
The lives lost to Covid in the older age brackets matter so much. We usually don’t know why. They’re usually strangers. But not always. 8/
Covid took Charley Pride this week. He was 86. His stories about trying to break into country music as a black guy in the Jim Crow era are out there for us to read and hear. But no one gets to ask him again. He’s lost to his family and lost to us. 9/ https://www.eastbaytimes.com/2020/12/12/charley-pride-country-musics-first-black-star-dies-at-86/
When I hear or read callous words about the elderly victims of Covid, I think of my grandparents. You probably think of yours. I wish a few more people had thought a bit harder about them this year. 10/
