My father paces restlessly across the room. Helplessness strikes a chord of anguish in me. I feel like we’re letting her die, and it’s strangely familiar, like I’ve lived this moment before. My awful dreams becoming real. I close my eyes, afraid my muddled thoughts will summon the face again.
Ayida sits alongside Gran and strokes her face with her working hand. Gran accepts the loving touch with gratitude, already looking relieved to have announced her imminent departure. She’s just broken every heart in the room, yet she looks peaceful.
“Tell me something true,” she demands.
My mother bows her head reverently and thinks a moment before raising herself up proudly. “Your mothering has been solid and mystical. Mama, you’ve been my rock, you’ve been the clear waters at its edge, and you’ve been the deep mysteries of the darker waters. I thank you for sharing your life with me.”
My father clears his throat. I have to look away from the glassy film of tears over his blue eyes. He clears his throat a second time. His legs are tented in a wide stance, like he needs help balancing. His hands are clasped low in front of him. “You’ve made me a better man.”
Gran nods appreciatively. “Burn a cigar with my body, Nolan.”
She inclines her head toward me, anticipating. I swallow hard. What do I tell her? I’m tortured? Screwed up? That I feel responsible for everything that’s gone wrong since I was lying in this same hospital weeks ago?
What’s true is that I don’t know what’s true.
Those things can’t be the last thing she wants to hear from me. “Gran?” I start, with a slight tremor. “Do you think people want to hear the truth no matter what it is? When someone is dying, it seems you should say what will bring them peace.”
Her weathered hand clasps my own. “That’s how I know you’re not yourself. I didn’t always agree with you, child, but I trusted you because you spoke your truth no matter how untrue it was for the rest of us. No matter how foolish or headstrong you were being.”
Does this mean she doesn’t trust me now?
A wry laugh puffs from her chapped lips. “But God, you sure live the deep end of life’s pool. That’s something to respect.” Ayida wipes her eyes. She gives me a sad, knowing smile as Gran talks to me. There’s a long pause and a breath that seems to take more effort before Gran says, “My something true . . . you’ve got to live with integrity so you can die with integrity.”
Tears stream down my face. A braided knot twists in my stomach. I desperately want Gran to stay with me. I want to tell her all my truths, even the ones that might turn her away. The scary and confusing things I’m seeing, the visions inside my head that have no continuity, how nothing matches up, as though the puzzle pieces of two lives got scrambled and don’t fit together.
I’m the imagination of myself, like that paper said in the motor home.
Gran’s blind, but she sees more than anyone else. Right now it feels like she’s the only one who can help me.
My mouth opens to speak, but Gran doesn’t just look like she has her eyes closed. Her face has lost its expectancy. My heart stutters. Has she?. . . ?
Machines are still beeping, though. She’s simply fallen asleep. Her chest rises and falls slowly. The pauses between exhale and inhale are excruciating. Every gap extends. I find myself holding my breath until she takes another one. My body taps into an inexplicable knowing of how it feels to have your breath come slower and slower until that last one becomes a boulder you can’t push uphill anymore.
My dad falls wearily into a chair. My mom doesn’t move from the bed, just sits there staring at Gran’s face, her eyes replaying a lifetime of memories as she watches her sleep. We don’t know if she’ll ever wake again. Every so often, the corner of her mouth tips up into what might be a grin. I wonder if she’s dreaming or revisiting her own memories.
Memories are so much like dreams.
An hour passes. Maybe more. We are all suspended, not wanting to leave for fear she will tiptoe out of life behind our backs.
“Now sing me your song again, Ryan,” Gran whispers into the new night, startling my mother and me. My father was snoring softly a few feet away, but he wakes with a jolt at Gran’s voice and the mention of my name. Soldiers half sleep like that.
“My song, Gran?”
She answers so low, we have to lean in to hear. “The one you were humming to me just now.”
“It’s okay. She’s slipping away,” my mother chokes out in answer to my confused expression. She leans in and kisses her mother, leaving tears on her cheek. Tenderly, she wipes it into Gran’s skin. “It’s okay to go, Mama. Nothing to be scared of. It will be beautiful there.”
I’m sobbing. I can’t help it.
“Yes, it’s okay,” Gran adds. “Ryan is waiting for me.”
Everyone frowns and darts glances at me. Shivers roll over my mom’s skin, making her head shake.
Gran’s last breath is an exhale. It sounds like relief.
Twenty-Six
IT’S NEVER RIGHT to go to the hospital with four people and come home with three. Never.