About Unwritten

Unwritten by Jade

Lately, I’ve been spending more time with my grandma. She’s 92 now; still sharp in spirit, but softer around the edges. These days, she’s mostly in her wheelchair, growing tired more easily, sleeping longer, and gently refusing when I ask if she wants to go out for a walk. So we stay in and I listen.

Sometimes she talks about the past, about people and places that blur together now. Some stories start mid-sentence, some trail off. I don’t correct her. I just let her voice fill the room. There’s a tenderness in hearing fragments of her memories, even when they no longer line up neatly.

Every now and then, I still sneak her out of the house for a short meal somewhere familiar. We’ll share porridge or noodles, and I’ll hold her hand as I wheel her slowly through the streets. Her grip feels smaller now, but it’s still steady, still warm. These little escapes feel like borrowed time, precious in their ordinariness.

It feels a little morbid, to be thinking about how to say goodbye while she’s still here. But volunteering with terminally ill patients has changed the way I see time. It’s made me aware of how fragile presence can be, how quickly the everyday can become memory. I’ve seen what happens when people run out of chances to say what they mean. And maybe that’s why I want to start saying it now, while I still can.

Goodbyes don’t always come suddenly. Sometimes they begin quietly, in afternoons like this when you start noticing what’s fading, when you realize love is no longer about fixing but about being.

I don’t know when that moment will come. But I can choose how I spend the time that’s left: by listening, by sitting close, by loving her fully while she’s still here.