Iris Silver Mist

My granny died this morning. She was just shy of 101 years old, so it’s neither a tragedy nor surprising, but I still feel very sad. She was one of the most important people in my life, top three for sure, and I wish I could have had one last laugh with her.

My sister and I had been planning to see her last fall, but that crazy Floridian hurricane (Milton?) derailed our plans. It’s hard to coordinate with my sister because she’s a bit of a socialite, much like my granny was, but she gave me potential dates in April and May. I picked May because I had a friend in town in April, and I thought, what difference will a month make?

Well, as it turned out, a month made all the difference. I feel stupid because I knew she was almost 101 and should have prioritized seeing her as soon as possible. But it’s probably not productive to dwell on feeling stupid, which I often am. I’m just trying to feel grateful that my last memories with her were so special. My sister and I visited for her 99th birthday, and she had us laughing so hard we cried. At one point, she thought my sister was her friend from college and started reminiscing about how they’d been “locking horns over the same man.” She told a story about dancing with my grandfather on a ship deck, slipping on a pad of butter, sliding across the ship, and making a billion friends because of it. She said she gave birth to two of her four children while driving, saying, “Palmer just popped right out!” My mom says none of that is true, but I’ve always been in favor of bending the truth in service of a good story (I’m a fiction writer, after all), and that was Granny’s MO. Even with severe dementia, when she had no idea who we were, she could still entertain the whole table.

I always admired my granny and wished I was more like her. Like I said, she was a socialite, completely magnetic and effervescent. She was one of the wittiest people I’ve ever known, and she genuinely adored people. Granny had the best attitude. She was so positive, always finding the fun in even the most dire-seeming situations. I remember when she had breast cancer in her seventies, and she was so exuberant to take my sister and me to her final treatment, saying we’d get Dairy Queen afterward. Also, I have to emphasize, because she’d want me to, she was absolutely stunning, even at 101. My sister and I would joke that we didn’t even want to take a selfie with her because we felt facially deformed next to her. Granny had the same birthday as Marilyn Monroe, which she often told people, and it made sense. They had the same buttery blonde hair, bombshell features, and It Girl energy. I thought she was one of the coolest people I’d ever met and felt so honored to be related to her.

I often think of a conversation my mom recalled on a recent visit that perfectly captures my granny’s wit and joie de vivre. One morning, my dad was getting ready to play tennis. Granny watched him leave with his rackets and said, “It would be so nice to play tennis.” My mom replied, “We could try to play.” (Optimistic of her to say this to a 100-year-old, but she is, I suppose, her mother’s daughter.) Granny said, “I wouldn’t want to beat you.” My mom said, “That’s okay, Mom, I don’t mind if you win.” Granny was quiet for a moment, then looked up and said, “Well, I wouldn’t want to lose to you either.” Later that afternoon, she told my dad, who is 77, that he could borrow her surfboard.

I’m glad Granny’s death was quick, like she wanted it to be, and that she was surrounded by loved ones. I was able to say goodbye to her over the phone while the nurse held it up. She was unconscious, but I could hear her breathing. I don’t want to focus too much on the death because Granny wouldn’t want that. She was a Gemini; she wanted things to remain light and fun! So I’ll just say she was an icon. Our queen. My sister and I were like, now we know how people felt when the Queen of England died! Her not being around feels both earth-shattering and inevitable.

Yesterday I knew her death was going to come in “minutes to hours,” as the doctor said—I promise I’m leaving the topic of death soon—so I looked at photos of Granny on my computer and listened to Jenny Hval’s Iris Silver Mist. The Norwegian artist’s ninth album is named for the iconic Serge Lutens perfume of the same name, a favorite of both Scout Dixon West and Luca Turin, two perfume influencers I’ve discussed on this Substack. Jenny Hval said the perfume “evokes the stages of its making: an alchemic transformation from plant matter to glorious vapor.” Listening to an album inspired by this transformation felt appropriate for processing the end of a beautiful life. I’ve since started thinking of Granny as “glorious vapor.”

I love that Iris Silver Mist has a song called “Huffing My Arm,” because that’s how I spend a lot of my life. Madison Bloom wrote for Pitchfork that the track captures a sense that Hval “has slipped into some less corporeal realm.” The listening session took a more meaningful turn, as my granny, too, slipped into some less corporeal realm.

“Impermanence is a symptom of transformation,” Bloom concluded the review. “On Iris Silver Mist, Hval extols this reality, inviting us to seek out the beauty in each stage. Even a vanishing scent reveals subtle notes as it fades.”