Gram died when I was 11, almost 12. That’s a weird age for death. On the one hand, I understood she was dead and gone, and I felt sadness, but more because I’d lost something, or maybe because it’s what I thought was expected of me.
On the other hand, I was too young to realize how much would be missing from my life because of her passing: the stories, the history, and the love. That’s what I should have been mourning. Santiago Holmes used to say, “you don’t know what you don’t know.” It took me a long time to understand what it meant.
From nowhere, Gram was diagnosed with lung cancer. She hadn’t smoked a cigarette in my lifetime, and when I asked Ma, she said she’d never known her to smoke.
Gram did love to cook. Not too long ago I read an article saying smoke from cooking was now being linked to lung cancer. Sometimes it feels like there’s inherent risk in everything, no matter how mundane. Gram was an excellent cook. I can still taste her Bolognese.
Her death was a long drawn out affair. Eight months in, the diagnosis was terminal. Nine after that the cancer was in remission. Four months later it was back. Two months after that she was gone.
Watching her decline was more difficult than her actual death. She cooked until she could no longer hold her wooden spoon. It had eaten away at her figure. By then she was little more than a pale sheet stretched over tiny bones.
Pap couldn’t stand to see her this way, so he found frequent excuses to spend more time in the cemetery shed. Sometimes I would walk over hoping for a ride in the backhoe and I’d hear him talking to himself, pleading, “please don’t take her. I will do better. I’ll do anything you ask of me. I can change myself, but I can’t live without her.”
I’d turn as quiet as I could, somehow knowing this was not something I was supposed to see, and head back to the house where I’d find gram and give her a big hug. I didn’t say a word to her about what I’d seen.
Still, I think Gram knew Pap would struggle without her. Gram always knew. When I came in from the shed, she’d squeezed me even harder than normal, like she had before her strength was stolen.
Ma did what she always did when things were difficult, she turned in on herself and worked harder, as though the work could stop the inevitable. There was more determination in her movements and not a single one was wasted. She continued to work two jobs, but she also started cooking and dinner and she carved out time to take Gram to appointments and treatments. I never saw her shed a tear or ask why this was happening Ma just kept going.
Gram passed in the evening, while I was sleeping. When I woke the next day Ma came in to tell me the news. I can still see the sadness hanging about her face. For as much as she worked, she was smiling most of the time, but that morning, the hurt tugged at the corners of her eyes and tears pooled, but she wouldn’t let them fall. They made her eyes shine in the sunlight.
The night before we’d been to visit her in the hospital. Her condition had deteriorated, but the doctors were continuing to treat her as though she had some time left. I missed her around the cottage, so I was excited at the opportunity to see her.
Pap, who hated hospitals, hadn’t left her beside since she’d been admitted. He’d left Santiago in charge of the cemetery, hoping for the best. He was waiting in her room when we arrived.
“She’s been taken out for a procedure,” he said, with a glance at my mother that meant something I was too young to understand – they’d found a middle ground in Gram’s illness and were speaking in civil terms to one another, “she should be back soon.”
“How was she feeling?” Ma asked.
“No better, no worse. I think she’s ready.”
“They think she’s close.”
“They haven’t said it in so many words, but she has the look.”
“I can imagine. Are you?”
“Is anybody ever?”
“I suppose you’re right. Can we sit with you and wait? He wants to see her.”
“Yeah, that’ll be fine. It shouldn’t be long now.”
The normal harshness had left Pap’s voice, replaced by a heavy sadness. His chin quivered as he spoke to Ma, and I think he was fighting back tears. I wasn’t sure how to act, having never seen such vulnerability in Pap before.
I followed Ma’s lead and we sat in silence with Pap for half-an-hour, but Gram didn’t return. I had a queasy emptiness in my stomach making me feel hungry and sick at the same time. My stomach made a noise, and as it was close to dinnertime, Ma told Pap we’d head home to put dinner on.
We’d just exited the elevator and were headed towards the door when a set of swinging doors opened and Gram was wheeled through on a hospital bed.
The bed and the sheets were white as was the gown she wore. She was so pale from the toll the cancer was exacting it was tough to tell where she stopped and the bed began.
She was moving fast as the nurse pushing the bed appeared to be racing to catch the elevator we had just left. Time slowed down for a moment as Gram raised a weak hand to us, and attempted a smile, though it was difficult to see with the oxygen mask covering her face.And then she was gone. Whisked away down the hall towards the elevators. Ma handed me the keys and told me to wait in the car before running down the hall after her. It was the last I saw Gram. It is burned into my brain forever
