{"id":675,"date":"2010-07-02T09:26:49","date_gmt":"2010-07-02T13:26:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/julijasukys.com\/?p=675"},"modified":"2020-01-04T14:41:44","modified_gmt":"2020-01-04T20:41:44","slug":"globe-and-mail-essay-i-lost-my-link-to-the-past","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/julijasukys.com\/?p=675","title":{"rendered":"Globe and Mail essay: “My link to the past is gone”"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Today, my essay about my maternal grandmother appeared in the Globe and Mail<\/em><\/a> newspaper. It’s a text I started a few months ago, while she was still alive.<\/p>\n

For years, even decades, my grandmother barely aged. My mother and I marvelled at how well she was doing, and celebrated each birthday as a gift.<\/p>\n

But after age 95 or so, she seemed to grow old at an accelerated pace.<\/p>\n

A few months ago, it became clear that she was starting her exit. Her body was tired, and we knew death was not far off.<\/p>\n

That’s when I started writing about her.<\/p>\n

Originally, the essay was supposed about a kind of anticipation of mourning or grieving in advance. But with her death, it became an elegy. The Globe<\/em> piece is a slightly shorter, tighter version of a text called “Blessings from Venus” that I read at her funeral.<\/p>\n

My grandmother, Veronika (Verut\u0117) Kubilius, died on June 10, 2010. Had she lived to September 4, 2010 she would have been 99 years old.<\/p>\n

You can read the essay here. <\/a><\/p>\n

[Photo of Veronika Kubilius ca. 2009 by Julija \u0160ukys]<\/p>\n

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