Last Updated on November 18, 2024 by Angel Melanson
We were surprised when the doctor okayed her to go home. We weren't expecting that until the following day, but Grandma was ecstatic about the early release. She was eager to reunite with her chihuahua Cherry and to be back in her own bed. We'd been talking about starting season two of Interview With the Vampire all week.
Grandma loved vampires. More than any other monster in media, of all the horror films we watched together, there was nothing more fascinating, titillating, frightening, and sexually ambiguous than the vampire. She introduced me to Blade on a worn VHS tape, we rented Underworld and saw the sequels together at the local cinema, and she introduced me to the world of Interview With the Vampire with the 1994 film when I was just 10 years old.
The child vampire Claudia is famously based on Anne Rice's daughter Michelle, who died of leukemia at age five. I don't know if my grandmother, who would go on to outlive both her children, knew that. Grandma's youngest son died in a house fire when he was 24 years old. I was five at the time. Then, in 2018, my father drank himself to death at the age of 49. I held his left hand, and she held his right as his heart stopped.
This story we shared for most of my life was written to process the death of a child when grandma could never really process the loss of her own. The grief of it is too staggering a thing.
We lived in a small conservative town in Arkansas, but luckily, our local library had the first three books in The Vampire Chronicles series. 2005 was a formative year in the development of my queer identity, and it happened in tandem with my reading the second book in the series, The Vampire Lestat. Not long after that, I came out to my grandma at a Chinese buffet over a heaping plate of lo mein. I had that much trust in her at 14. I didn't come out to the rest of my family until I was 21, and Grandma kept my secret.
Now, almost 20 years later, we had AMC's Interview With the Vampire. We watched the first season in September 2023, just after she was discharged from the hospital with a colon cancer diagnosis. Despite my pleading, she opted to not have surgery.
Ten months later, the tumor in her abdomen had caused internal bleeding that put too much strain on her heart. She'd coded twice. It's why I'd flown in from Massachusetts to be with her that Tuesday, to help her recover, and by the time I arrived she looked run down and weary, but she was gaining strength by the hour, sitting up on the edge of the bed, restless and talkative.
My childhood best friend and I spent that morning at the hospital talking with Grandma about nothing and everything. We talked about how homoerotic wrestling is. We talked about how Grandma had missed out, never having had sex with a woman, and we told her what it was like.
Grandma loved risqué topics, dirty jokes, and overtly thirsting over men. She once told me that having sex with a condom was like taking a shower in a raincoat. I have videos in my phone of her saying, “I love ass,” and “That's a penis!”
The first thing she wanted to do when she got in the car was get a mocha frappé. I begged her not to, half-joking that the caffeine would give her a heart attack, and we'd had enough health crises for the week. She rolled her eyes, and I did not deny her, because the truth is I had never been able to deny her anything.
“Damn, that shit's good!” She said, smacking her lips as she drank.
When we got her settled on the day bed at her apartment, she sent us back out again. She wanted two burgers from Burger King, one with no onions and one with extra onions to save for later. We obliged.
When we were alone, she had me rub her back, complaining that it hurt. I asked her if I should call the hospital, but she refused. I rubbed Icy Hot into the knots in her back. She took a muscle relaxer, and I propped her up on her pillows, tucking her in.
“I've loved you since the first moment I saw you, kiddo,” she said to me. She began to cry suddenly, her voice shaking. She started talking about my father's death. “He abandoned me,” she said. “He was my best friend, and he abandoned me.”
I held space for her until the crying ceased. There was only one thing I knew might ease her grief. I suggested we start season two of Interview With the Vampire, and she enthusiastically agreed.
“Oh, he's beautiful,” she said of Sam Reid's Lestat.
“Wait until you see Armand this season,” I said. “He's definitely your type.”
She gasped when Assad Zaman came on screen. “Oh, baby. Look at those curls. Yummy! I could just eat him.”
I couldn't help but laugh. “I told you so!”
The episode was almost over when I realized she'd fallen asleep. Once the credits started rolling, I woke her up. Her green eyes shot open.
“I'm going to get some lunch, Grandma. I'll be right back.”
She asked me to get two bottled Dr. Peppers while I was out, even though she had cans in the kitchen. “It tastes different in a bottle,” she said.
“Fine, I'll get you the bottles. I'll be right back, okay? I love you.”
“Okay, sweetheart. I love you too,” she said.
When I came back from lunch, I knew she was dead. The air in the apartment had shifted, stirred by her soul's departure. The light coming in through the window was yellow and shone down on her where she lay on the day bed, casting her body in an otherworldly glow. The TV was still on; the screen paused on the credits.
I dropped the sodas. Maybe she just looked like she wasn't breathing. This hope shattered when I got close enough to see her face. Her mouth was wide open, her green eyes rolled to stare at the wall behind her head at nothing. I shook her arm and shouted, “Grandmagrandmagrandma!” The world seemed to tilt sideways, my brain with it, a rush of scattered thoughts. A wailing like a wounded deer. It was me making that sound.
As she lay there with her mouth open, I hoped she would grow fangs and life would bloom back into her staring eyes. That she would say one more time: “You're my girl, you've always been my girl.”
But the world stayed empty where she once was, and it's been empty ever since.
