Yours Truly [h.s.]

5

Nobody was particularly surprised when I told them that I wasn't going to school anymore. Everyone knew I needed to be with Grandma. Not even Mom and Dad said anything about it. The only person that did was Grandma, herself. Telling me that everything was fine and that I needed to go off and learn to fly. I refused to listen. We all know that I'm stubborn, though.

So are you - that's why you took weird shifts at work every single day for weeks just to make sure you were at every single radiation appointment with Grandma and me.

We were in Harry's car, Grandma and I riding in the backseat, our jokes about Harry being our chauffeur left in the cracks of the seats weeks ago. Leftover crumbs. Bunched up receipts. Discarded and forgotten; thrown away. Only funny the first few times, until it became our reality. Our dull, twisted reality.

Grandma kept up good spirits for so long, I almost think she was doing it to make us feel better. I never told you, but one afternoon you were filling up the car with gas and Grandma turned to me and smiled weakly and told me that she was glad she had the two of us to take her to appointments. That we made it feel lighter. It hurt less when we were there. Like we were the cure. Not the poison they were pumping into her body. Us.

Harry started backing out of the driveway, the two of us waving to Grandma in the window as we left.

Consistent.

Predictable.

Predictable.

Everything was predictable, wasn't it?

We knew from the start, didn't we?

We didn't ask for a timeline because we didn't want to know, but we knew. We knew the whole time.

She rang the bell on a Friday. Signaling the end of treatment. It was all done. A battle won, loudly, victoriously. The soldiers running back to base to celebrate. Cheers and song and smiles. A battle won.

A war unfinished.

She fell on Saturday. And on Sunday. We took her to the hospital on Monday. We brought her home on hospice on Wednesday.

It was so fast. So damn fast. Wildfire destroying the nest. A broken wing plummeting out of the tree. Dizzying, supersonic orbit. Lightspeed. I wished it all would slow down. I wasn't ready.

I never would've been ready.

Life happened in sporadic flashes. One moment I was sitting in the chair beside the hospital bed, her hand intertwined with mine while I ran my thumb over the pretty leafy ring on her pinky finger. The ridges of the leaves rolling across the pad of my finger with each of her inhales and exhales. My head, resting on the side of the mattress, watching where our hands were joined together, looking over the deep red nail polish I had used to paint her nails last week.

The next, I was lying on top of her still-warm body. There was still life there. Still Grandma. She was still beside me. I just had to get closer to feel it. I just had to dig a little bit deeper and she would be there. She was still there. I knew she was still there. Warm and maple and tender and soft, but never fragile. It was just hidden.

Hidden underneath the pink blanket we would use on the porch in the late days of fall with our maple leaf cookies. Underneath the silky nightgown she always wore when I slept over; that she let me wear as dress-up when I was 7. Underneath smooth, wrinkly flesh. I knew she was in there. She wouldn't go away. I knew she wouldn't leave me. I just had to find her.

We were playing hide and seek again and I was curled up on the floor next to her bed as if she wouldn't be able to see my feet hanging out at the end. She was going to find me and then she would hide, probably in the dining room closet, or behind the couch. She was just hiding. I knew she was still there.