The matriarch

The following is an adapted version of the eulogy I gave at my grandmother’s funeral in October 2026. This has been edited for brevity and the additional vignettes (noted in italics).

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“This is typical,” a doctor patiently says, as she finally lulls into a much needed nap. They’ve settled on her dosages for now, though they can’t figure out why her irises have shifted into a bright blue when they’ve been green for 96 years. An end of the cycle I note in my head - how we come into this world with blue eyes and apparently must leave it when them too.

I had been dreading the inevitable to happen for most of my life. One watch of The Land Before Time at age seven led to my first existential crisis, my older brother consoling me as I cried, and the movie subsequently banned from any rewatches.

I couldn’t fathom death because it simply did not exist in my life. Any old relative passed away before I could walk - I had no recollection of how my family sorted and filed away their grief. Other people’s loved ones moved on to the next life, but not mine. Mine were immortal. At least, my grandma was.

Born July 26, 1930, to a family nestled across the Memphis/Arkansas border, my grandma - Charlotte Lee Johns Jenkins - was the youngest of three. She was Baptist at birth, Methodist by the time she settled in Houston, but eventually came to hold her faith by conviction rather than convention. She was a Christian first, a mother second and a grandma third; though by the time her grandchildren could talk back and sass, the second and third often blended together. She took to her role as matriarch of our family naturally, including putting up with the annual supply of chicken-themed gifts for years, despite only mentioning once or twice her affinity for them.

A typical day for her went like this:

She’d attend an early morning workout class at the Houston YMCA, then out to lunch with her other grandma friends. A quick shower and change of clothes later, she’d clock in for her volunteer shift at her church’s food pantry, before her congregation would tsk and tell her that she had stayed way later than she said she would. On the way home, she’d make a pit stop at the post office to mail a card for any and every holiday, always signed “Love, Grandma” with a $2 bill nestled inside. By the time 4 o’clock rolled around, she’d sit in her chair, take out the landline, and call up one of her children, filing away at her nails as she caught up on which grandkid was walking now, who got straight A’s and who may or may not had gotten in trouble at school.

She lived by herself but wasn’t ever alone. Her pocket planner always had someone’s birthday or concert or volunteer shift scribbled down on any given day, and she never missed an important milestone of her six grandchildren. Especially not me, since I was the only girl.

“You’re my favorite granddaughter,” she’d quip when I was little, her eyes crinkling in a knowing smile before wrapping me up in a hug. I didn’t know much about many things back then, but I always knew she was telling the truth.

By the time that I was born, my grandma was nearly 70. I never considered her elderly - she was spry and quick-witted and patient. I don’t think I even knew what the word “senile” meant until I was much older. My visits to her little yellow house in Houston were filled with museum tours and movie trips and ferris wheel rides at the aquarium downtown. My mom would exasperatedly sigh as my grandma showed me where the new stash of orange Milano cookies were kept in the pantry, purchased specifically just for us. She was the epitome of health, so long as sweets weren’t involved (and diabetes aside).

In sum: She was stern like a doting mother and gentle like a carefree child. Through her discipline, I’d remember to keep my elbows off the table, to say please and thank you, before running through the house with muddy shoes, trying to catch up to all the boys. My aunts and mom would yell after us for causing a disturbance, but she never minded. I think preferred a to have a little chaos when we call came to visit, a nice break from the quietness of solitude. When our visits came to an end and it was time to drive back to Dallas, I’d crane my neck as far as it could go to watch my grandma at the end of the long drive, waving us goodbye, before she latched the metal gate and headed back inside for another busy week.

“That’s expected,” I overhear a counselor say in the hospital lobby. A group of expecting mothers waddle up to the elevator on their way to a birthing class, pamphlets and partners in tow. I squeeze past them, eyes bloodshot but offering a polite, weak smile. Another end of a cycle I note in my head - how a place like this can hold space for both new beginnings and old endings.

When drafting this, I have found it difficult to limit the amount of memories and funny stories that I have with her. I could tell you about the time that my Girl Scout troop - all 25 of us, headed to Galveston - stopped at her house to use the singular bathroom, one-by-one. She kept asking the girls if they needed snacks and showing them around the house, as any good impromptu host would do, of course.

I could mention how she got a kick out of retelling the time she smacked my mom with a plate of spaghetti for mouthing off as a teenager. Or how crazy her birthdays could get with all of her fellow Houstonian grandmas.

But my favorite memory I’ll leave you with needs a bit of context.

Charlotte was always prim and proper. I remember her specifically despising Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs, finding crass, slapstick comedy annoying. She could joke and tease, but when it came to manners at the kitchen table, she was adamant.

There’s this sandwich place in my hometown that my family and I have been going to for years. Despite being a picky eater growing up, my go-to order was quite complicated, with a long list of toppings, including adding Sour Cream & Onion chips. During one of my many occasions of me concocting my sandwich, my mom warned me to never let my grandma see; it would be an inevitable scolding for me.

At some later point when she was in town, my grandma and I went out to lunch, just the two of us, to that same restaurant. We settled into opposite sides of the booth, unwrapping our subs from the waxy paper. Without thinking, I piled on the chips, strategically arranging the jagged pieces before smushing the bread back together. Just as I was about to take a bite, I looked up and saw my grandma watching me.

I was mortified. Shit. I braced myself for the lecture on being proper, how I shouldn’t play with my food, etc. But my grandmother, in all her sophistication and class, gave me a small smile, opened up her own bag of chips, and copied me, piling them up on her own sandwich. She canonized herself in my mind in that moment - for all her poise and gracefulness, she knew when to turn it off.

I’ve often wondered over the last month why she decided to leave when she did. Maybe she had workout class to get to with all of her afterlife friends. Maybe she wanted to hand over the spotlight to her first great-grandchild and namesake, Charlotte. Or perhaps, she waited until she knew we could all handle her loss.

“This is normal,” a hospice nurse murmurs, discretely cutting off her release bracelet. How beautiful it is - three generations of women spanning almost a century, clasped hand-in-hand-in-hand. Her eyes flicker between me and my mother, and in a way it feels like the torch, the responsibility, is being passed down to me. Or maybe, just this once, I finally resemble my mother when she was my age. Another end of a cycle I note in my head - how the child turns into a caregiver (and vice versa), knowing that the next generation will proudly assume the mantle.

When I told my grandma earlier this year that I had started reading East of Eden by John Steinbeck, she took the book in her hands and exclaimed: “I must’ve read this book decades ago - I’ve read so many books it’s simply hard to remember!” In the book, a character coming to terms with his increasing age, says the following to his adult son:

“I know where I am going - and I know why I am going. And I am content.”

For those who knew her; we know where she went. And she had many reasons to go. And I think, after a wondrous, love-filled, joyous 96-years, she is, at last, content.

October 2026