The most killed people are grandmothers.
I think it’s too close to kill a parent and it would also complicate having to identify a new guardian. Uncles and aunts rarely die, perhaps, because they aren’t considered immediate relatives? Cousins are way out of the emotional range, but there’s something intimate and affecting about a grandmother.
One of my creative writing student killed his grandmother thrice. The first time, of course, was an accident. There was work to be handed in, he didn’t have it, so his grandmother had to die. And we all know that in mourning, especially that of a dear grandmother, all the creative energy goes to the grave. I let it pass. A month later, this same student forgot that his grandmother had died. This time he was supposed to lead a class discussion. He apologized for his absence because he had to help his family in selecting a casket. When he returned to class, he still had red eyes, fresh from crying. I looked at him suspiciously, asked a few questions, enough to confirm that the new dead grandmother was the previous dead grandmother. The final time he was to present his writing portfolio in a workshop. I received an email. The previous, twice-dead grandmother had died a third time. After the “burial,” I arranged an individual meeting. The student did some ground work–produced a note from his mother–and also promised to email me photos of the funeral. I looked at him squarely and my creative perspective asked if all this was, in fact, a novel in the making. He feigned innocence. That’s when I put aside the slant aspect of truth (sorry Dickinson) and told him how lucky he had been that his grandmother was able to return to the land of the living only to die again, and again. I also mention that if he was willing to kill his poor darling grandmother three times just to avoid course assignments, maybe he wasn’t really ready to be in college. I did not ask who else had died to cover up his slacking in physics, calculus, and biochemistry, but I started to pay attention to members of my students families. That’s how I’ve reached a conclusion that grandmothers are the most killed. Every semester, they die in large numbers, over and over.
Pets don’t die by the way. The roommate’s pet will fall sick occasionally, but not their own pet. Once in a while a pet that’s wounded will mysteriously turn up on a student’s door to be rescued when he or she or they are about to leave for class. So, they drop everything to care for the pet. Sometimes the pet will be limping and crossing the road when the student is driving to school. The student will stop to save the pet. A lot of these pet incidents happen during workshops and/or when said student is in charge of a presentation or discussion. Before moving classes online after the coronavirus became a threat to shared public spaces, I came up with a spreadsheet to distinguish genuine deaths from fake ones. There are loopholes but to a certain point I can predict that true deaths happen when the affected students are not expected to be in charge of a presentation, discussion, or workshop. These kinds of deaths are also not limited to grandmothers.
I’ve also inquired from my professor friends in various institutions if over the years they’ve noticed this trend of dying grandmothers. I cannot say that I am astonished but the death of grandmothers is truly alarming. There ought to be a podcast solely on this issue.
If any good is to come of it, I imagine that in future, I could have a class dedicated to the death of grandmothers. It would be experimental and performative in structure. The best part of it is that nobody would die and the living grandmothers at home might get a kick out of it.
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