laurengrothe

I was preparing to say goodbye. Billows of clouds sped past the plane window; I asked her to hold on just a little while longer. 

As my brother and my mother and I sat on the king-sized bed of which she took up a mere 80 pounds of space, she said the same thing she always said when she saw me: “You look skinnier, did you lose weight?” 

She was always obsessed with losing weight. 

The conversation waxed and waned according to her awareness; often times we’d sit and wait for her to open her eyes again. 

Eventually, she sat herself up in bed and offered each of us a fragile hug. After many lingering, desperate attempts to stop time, I asked her if she needed help lying back down. She gently instructed me how to elevate her feet and indicated for me to pull the sheet up to her chin so that she might stay warm. 

A Narrative 

A baby monitor had been set-up so that Grandma could call upon him whenever she was in need of assistance. 

Suddenly, I heard a strained version of my Grandmother’s voice coming through the speaker: “Laurennnnn”....she called. 

I looked confusedly over at my Grandpa. He smiled a sideways smile and nodded back upstairs, urging me to accept her request. I gathered myself; shaking off what I thought were our final moments to hark back to her room. 

Quietly re-entering, I watched a delicate smile purse her lips. “You see those two flowers that hang separate from the rest?” she asked, slackly pointing to a vase of wilting flowers on the dresser beyond her bed. 

“I always think they look like little witches feet hanging; that’s what I imagine when I lay here. Like witches boots hanging from thin legs.” I let out a small giggle and pushed the hair away from my face. 

Her smile turned into a look of stupefaction, and for several moments she didn’t say anything but fixed her gaze upon me, staring as if in wonderment or concern; I couldn’t quite grasp the expression.

“Look, here. I got another tattoo today,” she announced, gesturing to a tiny, dark triangular spot near her wrist bone. 

She was making small talk. Anything she could think of. 

“This was my first one,” she continued, showing me another blotch. “It’s shaped like a heart. I don’t know what it’s from; liver spots, or what.” 

Stifling back the urge to burst into woeful tears, I was simultaneously clinging onto the intimacy, the delicacy of this moment. It was just for us. I decided to enjoy it. 

“Now you can say you got a tattoo in your life, Grandma.” She chuckled knowingly, understanding the irony of her having always been against tattoos and scorning the rest of our family for getting them.

 I walked nearer to her then, bending down to take her hand in mine and survey her green eyes, which contrary to the rest of her body, were shining like calcite crystals. 

At last, I stroked her hair. “You look beautiful.” 

She smiled a faint smile, her eyes glistening, “Thank you.”