Flash Fiction: Great Grandma

I was only four years old the first time I met death. It wasn’t a shadowy figure or a whispered warning—it came as the news that my great-grandmother, the cornerstone of my young world, had passed away. She was the first person I loved and lost, and though my memories of her are fragmented, they are vivid in their essence.

My great-grandmother was unlike anyone else in my family. To some, she was an enigma, a woman with one foot in this world and one in the next. She owned a small spiritual shop on the outskirts of town, a space that smelled of sandalwood and secrets. Shelves brimming with crystals, jars of herbs, and tarot decks drew curious strangers and loyal patrons alike. I can still recall the way sunlight streamed through the beaded curtains, casting tiny rainbows onto the floor, as she shuffled her cards with a kind of reverence that made me believe in magic.

But to my family, she was an oddity, an unsettling anomaly. They whispered that she was a witch, their voices laced with unease and disapproval. Perhaps it was the tarot readings, the whispered fortunes, or the way she seemed to know things she had no way of knowing. “It’s not natural,” I overheard my mother say once, her voice hushed but firm. To me, though, she was just Grandmama—the one who let me play with her amethyst pendulum, who told me stories about the stars and the moon, and who always smelled faintly of lavender and sage.

When she passed, the world seemed to dim. My family didn’t speak much about her afterward, as if erasing her from memory would rid them of the unease she had inspired. But I couldn’t forget. I wouldn’t. There was something in her presence that had felt eternal, a thread of the infinite woven into the fabric of my childhood. Even at four years old, I understood that she had left behind more than just an empty chair at the table—she had left behind a legacy of mystery and wonder.

As I grew older, I began to see the traces of her in myself. I was drawn to the things she loved: the glint of crystals in sunlight, the scent of herbs crushed between my fingers, the quiet wisdom of tarot cards spread across a table. My family’s whispers became louder when they spoke of me, their disapproval echoing down the same corridors as their fear of her. “She’s just like her great-grandmother,” they’d say, and they weren’t wrong.

But I wore that likeness like a badge of honor. I began to seek out her world, to reclaim the pieces of her that my family had tried to bury. I read books about tarot and divination, learned the names of the crystals she’d once sold, and tried to imagine what it must have been like for her to live in a world that didn’t understand her.

Now, at fifty years old, I look back and see how much of her courage runs through my veins. She taught me that there’s power in embracing who you are, even when the world wants you to hide. She taught me that death is not an ending but a transformation, and that the things we leave behind—whether they’re memories, wisdom, or the shimmer of a rainbow on a floor—can live on in the people who loved us.

My great-grandmother’s story didn’t end with her death. It lives in me, in the work I do, and in the way I choose to honor her every time I shuffle a deck of tarot cards or light a stick of incense. And though my family still whispers, their voices no longer hold power over me. I’ve found my own voice, one that echoes with hers, and it tells me I am exactly where I’m meant to be.

Thank-you for reading.

Much Love and light,

Brenda Marie