Grandma’s funeral is on Friday (the 13th…but I haven’t noticed, and it obviously means nothing) and I’m doing the thing we all do when someone dies: reviewing her life, sifting through the shards of long-neglected memories, hoping to find some clue that might point me to what her life Meant. (I’m fully aware that not everyone is obsessed with Meaning in the same way as I. But you are wrong, and I will never understand you.)

Here’s a truth about Grandma: She was afraid. This, above all other characteristics that coagulated and solidified and made her her (good cook, empeccable housekeeper) is the one that stands out, the one that colors all others and taints them, fogs my inner eye’s vision of her. I can see Who She Was only through the lens of What She Feared, whether it was the low opinion of others, the imminent threat of abject poverty (she was a child of the Depression), driving on the freeway, or Missing the Sale. (This last was perhaps the most terror-inducing of them all; Grandma was a prodigious shopper.)

I think she was also afraid of dying. Two encounters that seem random at first blush lead me to this conclusion:

When I was a freshman in college, I was taking Exodus-Deuteronomy with Bill Yarchin. It was my favorite class, the class that inspired me to declare a Biblical studies minor, the class that made me believe that maybe there was something to this whole Bible Thing, regardless of my previous experience. That semester, I went up to my grandparents’ house for Thanksgiving, and Grandma and I found ourselves warming our chilled behinds before the fire on a foggy, San Joaquin Valley late-autumn day. Unprepared for the theological miasma she would unleash, Grandma asked, “So what are you learning in school?” and I launched into an exuberant account of how Heaven and Hell were not native to Old Testament Jewish thought and the idea that we are Souls encased in Earthly Bodies is borrowed from Plato and not really Christian at all, and that’s why Jesus’ Resurrection was so crazy, and when we die we probably don’t go immediately to Heaven the way we always learned, but instead we are Actually Dead until the Second Coming and Judgment. (I spoke in a lot of capital letters in those days.) I failed to notice her growing agitation until it was too late. I finished my soliloquy with breathless glee, and Grandma responded, “Well, that’s fine for you, but when I die, I’m going straight to Heaven.” I tried then to explain that either way it shook out the point was moot, because obviously we wouldn’t know we were Actually Dead until Christ came back…but it didn’t matter. The thought of being wormfood and a persona non consquentia on the world (or at least the Bakersfield) stage for untold millenia was intolerable to her.

The other encounter happened on Sunday, about 7 hours before she died. Ash and I drove up to be with my grandpa because we knew it wouldn’t be long and I wanted to give him some support. While Ash and the rest of the family were chatting about non-death-related topics, I held Grandma’s hot, papery hand and listened to her ragged, irregular breathing, wondering if she could hear me. I whispered to her things I hoped might bring her some peace: “We love you. We’re all here and we’ll take care of Grandpa. We’ll be okay. We’ll take care of each other, just like you always took care of us. You don’t have to be afraid.” Until that moment, she showed no sign of response, but when I said afraid, her eyes flew open and her breath caught in her throat and she looked utterly, primally terrified. We stared at each other for a frozen second, and it was then that I remembered that Thanksgiving conversation of long ago…and the burden of remorse settled over me.

Now, it feels fantastically egocentric to suggest that Grandma was afraid to die merely because of some upstart, arrogant kid’s ranting about the finer points of life-after-death postulation…but it sure didn’t help. In that moment, staring into Grandma’s wild eyes, I felt the guilt that comes when you know you had a damn good argument…but man, you sure missed the point.

Her eyes closed once more (and for all I know, never opened again), and I whispered that I was sorry, that Jesus was waiting for her and everything would be okay. Sometime between our leaving at 6:00 PM and her dying at 11:00 PM, she must have crossed the line between fear and peace, and for that I am grateful.