I Love You, Ah-Mah

These are the words that I have right now.

Hello capybaras! Thanks for reading Sleepover. In the spirit of accessibility, this newsletter will always be offered for free. Please consider a paid subscription if you’d like to support the things I create — with and beyond this project.

---

I am in the process of losing someone that I love. Two days ago, my father sent me a message I knew I would receive at one point or another. My grandmother is passing away. Although the ending of a life at 100 may not be surprising, the weight of it is still heavy enough to change the color of the day, and every day after. Over the twenty four hours that followed, bright, vivid, heavy emotions shaded the corners of my brain and shed tears on the shower floor, an office chair, and the seat of an Uber to the airport.

I am not ready to write about this, to write about her or what our relationship means to me, to process the growing awareness I am stepping into as an adult around what loss is, and how we each carry it across our individual lives. But I want to share some of the thoughts that have been appearing to me, like stems of a flame that burn and then fade, because the dimensions of sorrow and gratitude I feel in this moment are things I do not want to forget.

The pain of loss is rooted in the joy of being loved. I think that every human on this planet is in search of the same thing: an affirmation that we are good, that we are decent, and that — even in the moments that we don’t believe either — we deserve to be hugged, to be held, to be fed, to be humored, to be laughed with and smiled at and given the space of understanding. Some call it “unconditional love,” the kind that stays with us as we grow between the awkward buds and twisted stems of every stage of life, reaching toward incomplete ideas of who we are. It comes from our parents, our friends, our partners… But I think that the first time I recognized it was with my grandmother.

When I think about my grandmother and the friendship we’ve shared, I am overwhelmed by the joy of memory. I am astounded by the exceptional reach of a grandmother’s love for her grandchild, thinking back to moments where I felt affection in times I thought I didn’t deserve it, and am devastated by the idea that in this world, that love, in its physical form, in its words and smiles and silent prayers, is transitioning into memory.

Our nights together, overwhelmed by saturated foods and the stench of fried oil, are approaching the impossible: an end in sight, and with it I feel that I am losing a core layer of the life I have known until today: that grandma is here, that her home is full of snacks, and that I am somewhere in the world with a plan to see her in however many months stand between now and September or Thanksgiving or Christmas.

Loss, at its core, makes us realize the size of the love we have for each other. It helps us see, beyond our busy minds and aspirational lists, what the people around us amount to: everything. For however much time we spent together, we added color to each other’s lives. We held each other up in ways we did not have the time, space, or presence to properly thank one another for, because that is life’s trick: the shape of love does not end, it grows and grows and grows until it is impossible to express it with completion. If we’re lucky, we’ve been attempting to do so for a while now. If we’re unlucky, we wish we had started trying earlier.

I am flying to see my grandma because I want to tell her how much she means to me in person. I want to stand by her side and hold my head to hers, recounting every image of us that floods my brain when I think about her: driving to Santa Cruz atop the sun-licked streets of the California 17, sitting in the middle of the Mississippi River on a cruiseboat, eating too many sweets and walking in parks and becoming a part of her friend group, three seniors and a college kid.

I want to tell her that she has helped me in ways I never had the language to thank her for before. I want to tell her that I am not afraid: I am grateful. I am happy. I am ready for the part of life that comes after, knowing that I had, and seized, the opportunity to build a friendship with someone who gave me a life to live in the first place, and that, over the course of twenty eight years, I have tried, and tried, and tried to be as present as humanly possible each time I walked through the entrance of her house, eager to remember the moments we spent, the words she said, and the things she learned along the way.

I want to tell her that I was listening. The entire time, I was taking notes. I will have fun. I will forgive. I will be a good friend. I will live a good life. And on days that the gardenias sway in the wind, and on nights that the tiles click atop a small leather table, the song of mahjong fresh in my memory, I will see her again. I will smile. And I will remind myself to have fun.

---

Thanks for reading the Sleepover newsletter!

Your feedback is always appreciated. Reply to this email or comment on the Substack post to let me know what you liked, what you didn’t like, and what you want to see more of.

With love,

Your favorite capybara ~ AKA Travis Zane

Follow me on: Instagram 🪩 TikTok 🪩 Twitter 🪩 YouTube 🪩 Twitch 🪩 Website

Follow Sleepover on: YouTube 🪩 Instagram 🪩 TikTok 🪩 Twitter

Through cozy content delivered to your inbox every week and pop up parties that turn into sleepovers, Sleepover celebrates connection, creativity, and cultural diversity.