I have such clear memories of my grandma in the kitchen, humming some song from the Gaithers: Homecoming CD as light spilled from the open oven door onto her green striped turtleneck and khaki slacks, her thick slippers over thicker socks. She wore earrings even on bad days, which I always thought meant something like courage.

She talked about “heavenly treasures” during chemo or when she cooked lasagna for my family and my grandpa would wave the dinner goodbye with a dramatic moan. It was all jewels for their heavenly crowns, all those moments of plain, earthy suffering.

But there wasn’t only heavenly treasures. There was also my grandma’s pearl necklace, and her wedding ring that always twirled around on her arthritic finger when she would pull me into a hug. It had sharp edges.

Memory is a tricky thing—my grandpa taught me that with his dementia.

His wedding ring was large and had a slit in the middle, with some very small diamonds inside of it sitting four—maybe five—in a row. His hands always shook, making it hard to tell where one diamond started and the other one ended.

After he moved out of the old house on O’Brien and into a nursing home, my grandpa would walk Costco with my dad. He would feel the need to get out and walk and breathe air that smelled like rotisserie chicken and new tires rather than the sanitizer and pie and old photographs smell of the home. Costco was the perfect balance of constant change and consistency. Sometimes, he’d walk the aisle three times in a day. After a year or so, he wouldn’t remember the first trip, and the third trip with the same snack samples would be just as much of a treat.

He’d walk slow when he went to Costco with my dad, then slower past the lit glass display cases of sparkling Costco wedding rings, earrings, necklaces, and charms.

Then without speaking, he would raise a shaking finger and point at the jewels all lined up in a row, all of the diamonds on his ring blurring together and joining the display.

And my dad would smile and say, “Aren’t those beautiful, dad?”

And whether my grandpa could hear him or not, he’d nod and smile and point.

Like he was lost in a memory of my grandma, or maybe just lost.

Something about those shiny, shiny jewels caught his eye and kept catching it each Costco trip we walked. It had to be at least a hundred trips before the end.

When my grandpa died, I thought the Costco trips would become a little less frequent, and a little more sad. But a pattern emerged after a few weeks, and after the dinner dishes were cleared, my dad would say he was headed out.

“Just to get something from Costco,” he would say.

And I followed. I would watch my dad point in the same funny fashion my grandpa had at that case of jewelry–the dad that wears the same khaki pants every day, that’s never worn a piece of jewelry save for the ring he married my mom with–would stand for a moment and let the earthly treasures sparkle in his eyes. Smiling like a kid laughing at his dad’s joke, a point point point of his index finger, his face humorously pensive and eyebrows raised. I inherited those eyebrows.

I walk Costco like my grandpa.

Because he and my grandma better just have heaps and heaps of heavenly jewels in their heavenly crowns, you know? And better than the Costco kind. The kind that makes your eyes tear up and the heavenly hosts point point point, the kind that makes chemotherapy and dementia and mourning and loneliness worth it all, you know?

You know?

I point at shiny things that remind me of my grandpa remembering my grandma.

Which I always think fills me with something like courage.

Gabrielle Eisma

Gabrielle Eisma graduated Calvin with a BFA in studio art and writing in 2022. She’s from Grand Rapids, Michigan, where she now works as a writer and illustrator for books for (mostly) children and middle grade readers.