By Devan Towslee. The grandparents who raised me twice, the years I spent as their caretaker, and what they taught me about staying, and about going.
This memoir includes addiction, illness, and the deaths of my grandparents.
Food was how we loved each other.
Nearly every Sunday, without exception, there was dinner. My grandmother baked from handwritten recipes kept in a worn container, pages stained with butter, sugar, and time. Notes, small adjustments, substitutions, and reminders written in her careful handwriting crowded the pages.
My grandfather cooked meals the way some people pray: slowly, deliberately, trusting instinct as much as instruction. His recipes lived in memory, refined through repetition and patience.
Sunday dinner was not something we debated or scheduled. It was something you showed up for.
You sat. You ate. You shared. You listened.
I did not understand then, that this was training.
My parents separated when I was young, my father later died of heroin. After that, my mother, Bethany, began to disappear long before she ever physically left. Addiction hollowed her out. By the time I was in middle school, she was no longer capable of being a parent, emotionally or practically.
My sister Willow and I were separated and sent to different households after being homeless children.
I was fourteen when my grandparents chose to take me in. They did not have to. They were the positive change in my life after my mother had gotten arrested for drugs on my birthday.
My grandfather, Larry Towslee, had looked at me and told me, “I love you. I have your back no matter what.”
That sentence became structural. It held my life together when nothing else did.
They were modest, happy old hippies who had built their homestead on forty-two acres over decades. Everything they owned was crafted slowly, deliberately, and with love. Their dream stood because they stayed with it, even when it was hard.
They stayed with me, too.
My grandfather ‘Papa’ was a Buddhist. He believed in cosmic consciousness and totality—the idea that nothing exists alone, that everything is connected. He worked at Potlatch for years and took pride in showing up every day, telling stories about the job as if they mattered, because to him they did.
In his retirement, he cooked, worked on projects, enjoyed his pipe, meditated, and told jokes. He believed laughter could loosen suffering, even in the hardest of times.
When I was fifteen, struggling with PTSD from my parents and the weight of a childhood that never felt safe, I went to him often for guidance.
He had once said, “Like time—and with time—these emotions will pass.”
At the time, it felt like reassurance. Years later, it would feel like instruction.
My grandmother Karin, known as ‘Nana’—walked the perimeter of the homestead every day. Snow, rain, heat, humidity—it did not matter. Strength was not something she announced. It was something she practiced quietly.
She worked as a dental receptionist in Cloquet, Minnesota, for over thirty years. She never missed a day. She loved her community, even when she came home frustrated, complaining about the ‘Monday people.’ She baked constantly for us and for her church. She would carefully put together cookies, pies, and breads that would make you smile from ear to ear.
Food was how she said I love you; it was how she kept the household stitched together.
One afternoon, my grandfather became short of breath after sitting in his chair, after going downstairs. I noticed this immediately. I made him check his blood pressure and oxygen levels. They were dangerously low.
He refused to go to the hospital. He said he would meditate through it; after much persistence, I drove him anyway. At the hospital in Cloquet, he slipped into a coma-like state. Doctors were unsure whether he would survive. He was transferred to Essentia Health in Duluth on a respirator.
I stayed all night by his side, listening to machines breathe for him. His first sign of consciousness was groaning when nurses mentioned shaving his beard.
Soon after, Nana became sick. This was a massive shock to us all.
At first it was a stomachache. Then pain. Then diverticulitis.
She came home after surgery, and I became her caretaker. I helped her move as needed, cooked meals, watched her carefully. One afternoon she fell. She was in too much pain for me to lift her without hurting her.
I immediately called the ambulance. That was the moment care stopped being temporary.
Nana went in and out of hospitals and temporarily resided at my uncle Nathans house. Grandpa returned home. I took care of him; laundry, meals, dishes, helping him up after falls that became increasingly frequent.
There were no scheduled services. There was only me.
I was starting my pressure washing and soft cleaning business during this time. Life had to continue anyway, even as ours narrowed to appointments, pushing motivation, and vigilance.
Days blurred together. Nights stretched long. Worries embedded themselves internally.
Eventually, Nana entered hospice care.
I visited every day before work. Sometimes even just to sit quietly. I brought her raspberry iced tea every time, because she had asked for it once. Even after she stopped drinking it, she smiled when I brought it.
I appreciated that I was able to help her smile. I brought living plants and flowers in bloom. I wanted life in the room to motivate her to keep pushing.
One day she looked at me and asked, “Are you in on it?”
At the time, I did not know what she meant.
On November 15, 2024, at 8:45pm I held her hand while she died. I remember the cold breeze that washed over the nursing home. A breeze so heavy it momentarily drowned out the sobbing from the end of the hall.
Before her death, she did not cry out of fear for regrets, she did not beg God or family for strength. She kept the beautiful person she was intact through to the end. Her peace was having her family by her side, and I am grateful to have been a part of that peace and grace.
After Nana died, I quit DoorDash and became Papas full-time caretaker. It hurt to see he stopped going upstairs. Life shrank to one floor. His grief settled into him physically.
I tried to keep him moving and motivated. I would do wheelchair aerobics with him, gentle encouragement, and jokes.
I even had gotten a puppy named Blitzen, to try and cheer him up with a friend for when I was gone.
We held an intervention two weeks before he died. We were worried about his habits, his mobility, and his mental health.
Efforts slowed, He was still trying. We did not know then, but he was trying for us, not himself.
I started college driving the Manual 2001 Subaru Legacy GT my Nana taught me how to drive; a car she inherited from her brother Peter, who had cherished it when he had bought it brand new.
Growing up, she drove my sister and I to elementary school in it daily. It carried memory in every shift of a gear, and with every sound.
One day, after restoring the Subaru, I was listening to NPR, I heard someone say technology would evolve more in five years than it had in the last fifty. I wanted to make my grandparents proud; this motivated me to enroll in Business and Computer Technology at FDLTCC.
Life continued.
On May 4, 2025, at 11:50 p.m., I heard my grandfather call out “Devan!”. I found him on the floor of his room, face down. I had asked him if he was all right, he replied “Yes I am not hurt.”
I had tried to lift him; I was able to roll him over and put his CPAP machine on. I had called 911 to come and help me get him up, and to check his vitals.
Within a matter of minutes after the operator hung up on me, tragedy struck; Papa suddenly stopped breathing.
In shock, I called 911 again. In the moment they taught me on how to perform CPR. Among the screaming for him to stay with me I heard the crack in his ribs from the pressure.
There was nothing I could do as I screamed at the operator “How long?”.
There was no response. There was only the moment.
He died with a smile on his face. He was ready even if I was not. This was his grace.
Outside, I smoked cigars like cigarettes while the police talked to me. Time froze. The world felt impossibly quiet knowing I failed.
We held seven Buddhist-style funerals at the homestead, one every seven days. The final one landed on Sunday. People from all circles Papa had built throughout the years came to the house. Food was made and shared. Stories and memories of Karin and Larry were told.
Sunday dinner continued, one last time. You sat. You ate. You shared. You listened.
My grandparents raised me twice.
The first time, they taught me how to live.
The second time, they taught me how to stay.
I did not understand that caregiving was a language until it became the only one left. There are no grand speeches at the end of life. No final performances. There is only presence; quiet, aching, relentless presence. Showing up when nothing can be fixed. Sitting when there is nowhere to go. Holding a hand when time refuses to slow down.
Grace is not beauty. Grace is endurance.
I used to think dying with grace meant being unafraid. I was wrong. My grandparents were afraid at times. They were tired. They were in pain. But they never turned away from one another, and they never left me to face it alone. Grace, I learned, is not the absence of fear—it is the decision to remain despite it.
Nana died with her family beside her, her dignity intact. She did not rage against the end, nor did she surrender herself to it. She stayed herself. She let love surround her without apology. I did not know then that this was instruction.
Papa followed her not long after. His body failed him, but his spirit never withdrew. Even at the end—on the floor, breath leaving him, ribs breaking under my hands—he was present. Ready. Smiling. He had already made peace with the inevitable. The only thing left unfinished was my understanding.
I thought I failed him. For a long time, that belief lived inside me like a wound that would not close. But failure would have been leaving. Failure would have been absence. Failure would have been choosing comfort over care.
I stayed.
That is what they taught me. That love is not proven in the easy years, but in the shrinking ones. When rooms get smaller. When days revolve around pills and appointments. When grief arrives early and stays late. Love is staying when the world quietly suggests you do not have to.
Sunday dinner was never about the food. It was rehearsal.
You sit.
You eat.
You listen.
You stay.
Death does not ask for perfection. It asks for witnesses. It asks for hands to hold, for voices to answer when someone calls your name in the dark. Dying with grace does not erase pain—but it softens the edges for the ones who remain. It turns loss into something survivable.
Because of them, I know this now:
Grace is not how you die.
Grace is how you love someone while they are dying.
And because they showed me how to stay, I will never be afraid to do it again.
Recorded October 15, 2026, before the move to California.
For a long time, I was the one who stayed. My grandparents, they taught me that love is staying when the world says you don't have to.
This is the heart of it. Leaving isn't the opposite of what they taught me. It's the next lesson.
First they raised me. They taught me to live. Then they raised me again and taught me to stay. Now I think they'd want me to learn how to go.
Papa said, “Like time, and with time, these emotions will pass.” It got me through grief the first time, and now it gets me through the fear, and the ambition motivates me to go into the next chapter.
A college professor asked me: if you could create a new sound, what would it make you feel? I came up with the sound of delusion. Every successful person had to have a sound of delusion that they chased. The sound that overcast the doubt and gave them ambition and motivation. This is me chasing that sound of delusion.
I'm a little scared, but I think it's only because I'm excited.
Papa believed nothing exists alone, and that everything is connected. I'm not leaving anyone behind. I'm bringing them with me into this next chapter. From Nana walking the perimeter, to Papa showing up every day to work and loving his family like that was all that mattered. That is how I'm going to build my dream.
I think we all need a delusion worth chasing. A dream, or a purpose. Don't be scared to expand. Be eager to chase it.
The people who doubt you often don't believe in themselves, and they're casting their doubt upon you.
I believe that living fully isn't living up to society's roles and changing yourself for that. I think it's chasing your dreams, chasing what fulfills you.
Why are you doing what you're doing today? And who are you doing it for? How are you going to chase your dream? What really drives you? Who do you want to be in the world, to be that change you want to see?
Most importantly, I think in twenty years we'll all regret the things that we don't do more than the things we might have tried and failed at, or embarrassed ourselves at. So I'm giving this my everything and my all. This is all I want: to go out and see the world, and pursue these dreams that I have and these plans that I have in place.
And it all comes back to: you sit, you eat, you listen, you stay.
And when it's time, you go.
This is me going.