Wednesday, October 30, 2019 // The Statement
6B

M

y grandfather was born on June 6, 1927. He 
was in the Navy during World War II and he 
served on a submarine and was stranded for 
weeks with only coconuts for sustenance. We celebrated 
his 92nd birthday early this summer, and he remarked, for 
the second year in a row, how much this celebration meant 
to him and how he couldn’t wait to eat lemon cake again 
with us the next time around. He wanted to live to 100 and 
well past that. 
I am lucky to have lived close to my family while grow-
ing up. We scattered ourselves around a little lake in south-
ern Michigan, where my dad was raised. My little sister 
and I would run around the neighborhood during the sum-
mer playing spy games, building forts, collecting plants and 
rocks. We would ding-dong ditch neighbors and run into 
the woods, make trails along the lakefront and commit our 
fair share of trespassing over soggy lawns and piers. 
My grandparents had a beautiful garden with wild 
raspberries and strawberries that we would sneakily har-
vest and bring home. The past few summers, we spent 
hours picking wild blackberries from their prickly bushes, 
avoiding mosquitoes and spider webs before stopping by 
our grandfather’s house to share. My grandmother used 
to layer up in the heat of July with socks pulled over long 
jeans and sweatshirts tucked into waistbands to evade 
thorns and biting mites, but more importantly, to reach the 
back of the berry bushes and avoid letting a single berry go 
to waste. Their garden—now overgrown with grasses and 
dandelions—no longer produces the delicate fruit it once 
did. 

As summers passed and high school drew to a close, 
family members were increasingly curious as to where I 
planned to continue my education. Not many people in 
my family, aside from my older cousins, attended college, 
and their expectations for me were high. I had college 
applications over halfway done for all sorts of out-of-state 
schools in October and I planned on having an additional 
two weeks to complete them with proper edits and teacher 
revisions. 
I received a concussion that day and was diagnosed with 
Post Concussive Syndrome after a month or two of symp-
toms not letting up. I was recommended for medical leave 
and was placed under a Section 504 plan which allowed me 
to be a part-time high school student and miss a significant 
number of school days. This arrangement allowed me to 
still graduate with my class.
My grandfather wanted to check in and see how I was 
doing. We connected quickly over our shared head knocks; 
he had fallen his fair share of times with old age. We dis-
cussed mutual symptoms and how these injuries made 
us feel different, even if we didn’t look different. We talk-
ed about how I didn’t know if I would get into any of the 
schools I applied to because I wasn’t able to finish my col-
lege applications. He promised me I would be fine, and I 
ended up only submitting to in-state schools. 
Once I got into Michigan, it was hard for me to talk to 
him as his hearing had started to decline. His stubborn-
ness demanded I shout to convey a message. So, I reverted 
to writing him letters and sitting with him while he read 
them and smiled back up at me. I wrote to him about my 

new research position, my volunteering at the hospital, the 
classes I was taking and how much I loved it here at Michi-
gan. He was so enthused when he found out I wanted to be 
a doctor — it’d be the first in our family and he immediately 
began calling me Dr. Bowman when I visited. He liked the 
ring of it and how much responsibility it carried. I could 
never express enough how his his nearly one hundred years 
of hard work granted me the opportunity to be in the posi-
tion I am and be a student at the University of Michigan.
Between bonding over mutual head traumas, intently 
listening to classic American stories from decades prior or 
shouting “I love you” from three feet away because he was 
too stubborn to use his hearing aids, my grandfather made 
everything possible and achievable for my family. Especial-
ly as a first-generation college student, the feat of attend-
ing a prestigious school is rarely possible without the hard 
work and sacrifice of respected family members that work 
to instill in you a drive for integrity and success. 
I recently got accepted for a position at The Michigan 
Daily as a columnist and he was so thrilled to read the Uni-
versity’s newspaper and see our last name printed in it. For 
fall break, I brought home four copies of each paper I was 
in so far this school year to show him. But on the morning 
of Oct. 14, my grandfather passed, and I wasn’t able to show 
him in person. This date was once so important for me as it 
marked a change in my life post-concussion. Now it signi-
fies another major change and life without my grandfather. 
This date now holds intrinsic importance and sadness for 
me in so many interwoven and complex ways, and I know I 
will be unraveling it for a long time. 

The path that grandparents pave for us

BY BRITTANY BOWMAN, STATEMENT CONTRIBUTOR

PHOTO COURTESY OF BRITTNAY BOWMAN