Chapter 37: 2010 — Summary, Themes, and Analysis

⚠️ Spoiler Warning: This guide contains detailed spoilers for the entire novel. Proceed only if you've finished reading or are comfortable knowing the plot.

Summary

The chapter opens in 2010 with Nana suffering from a bladder infection. The narrator picks up her prescription, but two days later Nana's pain has worsened. The narrator takes her back to the doctor, who discovers the infection has moved to her kidney and prescribes a different antibiotic. The doctor reassures the narrator that home monitoring is sufficient and remarks that Nana is lucky to have her. The narrator privately thinks the opposite—that she is the lucky one.

Back home, Nana is too tired to eat. She falls asleep without changing into her pajamas, and the narrator notices a slight rasp in her breathing. Concerned, the narrator spends the evening researching medications and complications, jotting questions to ask the doctor the next day.

The following day, when Nana hasn't stirred by lunchtime, the narrator enters her room and finds her dead. Unlike her mother's death, Nana appears peaceful—warm, serene, bathed in sunlight. The narrator stays with her until the warmth leaves, then calls Dad, who arrives within twenty minutes and goes to Nana's room alone. The narrator reflects on the differences and similarities between losing Mom and losing Nana: the same guilt, the same fear that Dad will drink, the same grief for a woman who raised her.

The narrator and Dad set aside their history to plan the funeral together. At the service, Davis and Bekah send white roses. Kendi, Shauna, and Michael attend. Shauna cries, and the narrator realizes for the first time that Shauna must have cared deeply about Nana—and that she has no memory of how Shauna handled Mom's death. She thanks Shauna for being family. Later, Shauna hugs Dad, who sobs in her arms. The narrator recalls an almost identical scene from Mom's funeral and begins to question what other omissions her memory has made.

Kendi tells the narrator that Dad and Shauna helped each other through Lillian's death, and that Dad is here and not drunk. The narrator dismisses this as a low bar, but Kendi's question—