Late last year my dad was diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis — or ALS — an objectively terrifying neurodegenerative disease. It’s progressive and fatal. It’s already taken my dad’s ability to talk and eat normally.
There is no cure. When he told me about his diagnosis, I knew two things right away: I wanted to spend as much time with him as possible and if I was going to be living in my childhood home, I would need a hobby. Enter: the granny square.
I’m not very crafty, but I do like textiles. My mom knits, but in her youth, she’d crocheted a granny square blanket and was game to re-learn how to do it. Meanwhile, my dad — who has a funny sense of humor — decided his coping mechanism would be binge-watching “Grey’s Anatomy.
” Granny squares and Grey’s became the after dinner routine and soon I was churning out dozens of multicolored squares. And it felt like this project was, maybe, helping? “It’s incredibly meditative,” says Gabrielle Gatto, a death educator and Manager of Public Programs at Brooklyn’s Green-Wood Cemetery. “And that’s part of ritual.
That’s part of really sitting with something.” On a Tuesday evening, Gatto sets up a snack table inside the cemetery’s chapel, preparing for the start of her monthly interactive workshop, “Grieving & Weaving.” “I think it was important to have that in the name as well,” she says, laughing a little at her rhyme.
“The bold honesty of, hey, we are going to talk about gri.