In tarot, a card of endings; most grimly, physical death. Yet it is also a card of signaling change, of boundaries and beginnings. It sits in the middle of the major arcana to represent a change of theme for the sequence before and after it. Today, it serves as the bookends as I reflect on one-third of my life. More importantly, what my life has meant for others.

I had a fantastic set of grandparents growing up. To the point that it's odd that I haven't incorporated the story of loving grandparents in any of my fictions, including characters at Absit Omen.

As a single child to a single mother, it was my grandparents who helped raise me during my formative years. Their old house was on a few acres between a major highway and the railway track. They grew corn, beans, squash and rhubarb on a half-acre garden. Grandpa was a Korean War veteran who worked for the post office. Grandma was a secretary at a local electric company before she was a homemaker. Even in retirement, they'd help out at the family farm a few towns over, operated by my grandma's brother. When I was young they farmed sod (turf grass) and grandpa would drive a tractor to mow the fields. They built a new home in the mid 2000s across the highway on Mississippi river property they owned. My grandparents also liked to travel. Over the decades of their marriage, vacations included Hawaii, Panama, Australia & Ireland. Along with a big trip as a family we had in Germany & Czechia; the latter where my grandma's family has direct ancestry from that half of the former Czechoslovakia.

My overactive imagination was supported by my grandparents as a kid. Reading, drawing, other artistic talents as I did children's community theatre and learned the saxophone in middle school. Up until I was old enough to drive they'd pick me up for the majority of my school days. Grandpa was as sharp as a tack, with a head for numbers, addresses and directions. Grandma was very caring and generous, able to befriend many people after a short meeting. She loved polka music.

I had several false starts with college and jobs before I settled into a Creative Writing degree. I'd still regularly help my grandparents as they aged. Chores around home, recovery from hospital visits. Our immediate family branched out from their daughters, my mom and my aunt. We used to have a tradition of Saturday morning breakfasts out to restaurants. It was February of 2013 when we had the most pleasant breakfast we'd had for some time. My uncle tended to poison the well with his viewpoints of family; I like to think grandpa was a figure that kept him in check, given the change of dynamics afterwards. The evening following this breakfast, grandpa was checking emails when he collapsed. He was under heavy observation under most of the week. I was finishing up a winter term with writing projects to present, driving to the university campus in the snow. I was with some classmates at a nearby Turkish cafe when I heard the news that he was taken off of life support. This was after I'd been at Absit Omen for a few years, before I had more lengthy hiatuses.

I stepped away from completing my spring term to assist my grandma in the wake of grandpa's passing. I've been her primary caretaker for just over a decade. Time marched on, as the years slowly made her infirm and unable to drive. Then the years of the pandemic. In the back of my mind, I'd sometimes regret that I didn't continue with the novels I had in mind from my incomplete writing degree. Or that I never really talked to anyone about both the joys and frustrations of being the dutiful grandchild to the grandparents that set me right, as their own health declined. These past several months, it was a blow by blow of my mom recovering from knee surgery to grandma recovering from multiple strokes near the start of 2024. It was during the second stroke, on a night long vigil I began reading threads at Absit Omen again. Remembering the stories I once wrote here with others. Catching a glimpse of new changes to the site and the stories written when I was gone.

Rejoining Absit Omen has been something to do on the side as we transitioned to home hospice care for grandma. When she had her wits, she was still making friends with nursing and cleaning staff who loved to come visit her. A period of time now ended.

My memories of the best years of my grandparents' lives will outweigh the memories of the time immediately before their passing. That difficult time when you're ready to say goodbye, knowing that their pain will end in a soon but indefinite future. Lives, much like stories, all come to an end. But the art of storytelling keeps these memories alive. Tales to be newly discovered by other audiences if they find the places stories like this are written.

I rarely take to non-fiction or autobiography, as I prefer the use of fiction to examine other truths. This is one story that I needed to tell, somewhere.

Because if it wasn't for the loving encouragement of my grandparents, I might not have found writing as a calling. The creativity that dreamt up a half-merfolk Hufflepuff witch and the rest of my ensemble. They didn't know anything about my writing at Absit Omen, but they knew as a kid I had many imaginary friends and could retell almost every story I've read. I loved my grandparents very much.

Perhaps Helio's sense of direction and Philo's head for numbers came from grandpa. Maybe it's grandma's unconditional love at the core behind Ligeia's macabre leanings and Casey's muggle mother, Darla. And while Drea didn't have her mum's parents in her upbringing to ground her imagination, the way I had mine, she has more of a green thumb then I inherited from them both.

But now it's time to turn the page. Close the book. Look to new stories alongside the stories I've picked up again.