A Beat of Goodbye: An Autoethnographic Account of My Last Days with Grandma

• Main Author: Angela Kathleen McNichol
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: University of Alberta 2018-09-01
• Series: Art/Research International
• Subjects: autoethnography, writing as method, aging and the female body, reflexive narrative, self and identity
• Online Access: https://journals.library.ualberta.ca/ari/index.php/ari/article/view/29379

In this paper, I use field notes, journal entries, and memory recall to write an autoethnographic account of my experiences of the last days of my grandma’s life. I use writing as method in the form of an introspective narrative, layering artistic storytelling and academic references. My original research goal was to better understand the experience of loving and caring for a very old family member by showing the inside of how I experienced my grandma’s aging and final days, including her move to a retirement home, and her death a short time later. By sharing narratively my lived experiences of my grandma’s last days, I also hoped to disrupt some of the socially accepted interpretations surrounding physical bodies and aging, especially for women. Although my initial goal was to understand how these types of experiences transform us, in the process of telling this story I found that what I also gained was a deeper understanding of who my grandma was, and ultimately, who I am.