by BT Urruela
She stirs with excitement beneath her blankets as I read on. She feels alive to me for the first time in more years than I can count. Swaying with the cadence of my voice, her enjoyment is much like it always is when I’m reading to her, but there’s a new, effervescent sparkle in her eye. A lively twinkle that lets me know she not only hears me, but she understands me. She understands the significance of this old, tattered book in my hands and the words I’ve read to her for years now. The same words she read to me a lifetime ago.
I can’t help but look up at her every few lines, partially out of fear that I’ll miss her leaving again, back into the darkness of this disease, and partially because I love that look of understanding and appreciation in her eyes. It’s been so long since she’s looked at me like this. She smiles back at me every time my eyes trail from the pages to her. It lets me know I’m in the clear, that I’m okay to read on. She is here with me, as I am with her, and we become one through the words.
It’s when I hit page one hundred and six that I instinctively look up at her, expecting to see her eyes closed, sleeping, as she always is by this point… but she isn’t sleeping. The pillow is hugged tightly into her chest, and her lively eyes are open wide and taking in my every movement.
“How are you feeling, Grandma? Want me to continue?”
She nods, a slight little nod, and she smiles. “Of course, Gavin. I could listen to you read for forever.”
I smile back, brushing her matted hair behind her ear, resting a hand against her cheek for a moment before I pull it back to my side and continue reading.
Twenty pages down and she’s still listening, still watching, still swaying along to the words.
Twenty more and her eyes have drifted closed. Her hitched breathing catches my attention. She balls her hands and loosens them in quick succession as if she’s fighting to hold on. I drop the book to the nightstand, rising from the chair and leaning down over her.
“Grandma. Grandma. Are you okay?”
She doesn’t respond. Her eyes just flutter beneath her eyelids, her breathing ragged and strained, the veins in her neck bulging.
The beep-beep-beeping of the heart monitor slows.
I shake her gently, trying to open her eyes, and after a few good shakes, they finally do—just little watery slits. “Grandma, please. Talk to me.”
She smiles weakly, lifting her weathered hand up to my cheek slowly. She places it against me and brushes her thumb lightly along my skin as the tears roll down.
“I love you, Gavin,” she whispers, so quietly I can hardly make it out. “I love you so much.”
“I love you, too, Grandma,” I gasp, as her hand retreats to the mattress, and her eyes close.
The beeping stutters a bit and then it stops its regular cadence, holding out instead—one long, gut-wrenching, high-pitched drone.
I race to the door, ripping it open, and arching my head into the hall.
“Jackie! Jackie! Come quick. Please.”
Jackie’s braided head comes shooting up from behind a filing cabinet down the hall, and when she spots me, the tears now rolling freely down my face, she slams the cabinet closed and hurries toward me.
“Is she okay?” she asks, reaching the door and barreling in past me. She flips on the lights as I fight to find the words.
“It’s happening,” I mutter, sucking in breaths between the sobs. “It’s happened.”
Jackie leans in close to Grandma, checking her pulse, though the heart monitor already tells her everything she needs to know. Its blaring ring is like a shot straight to the heart. It rips a hole right through me.
She fights to bring Grandma back—conducting CPR and radioing for the on-call doctor to come immediately. But her eyes tell me what I already know.
Grandma is gone and there’s no bringing her back.
I fling myself onto her, my chest heaving, trying to breathe as I cradle her lifeless body in my arms.
“Grandma! Please…don’t…” I cry, unable to accept what’s right in front of me. “I can’t lose you. You’re all I have. You’re all I—” A new round of sobs snuffs my words out. I bury my face in her neck, no longer feeling the pulsing of her heartbeat against my skin—the sick indication that death has stolen her from me. I feel Jackie come up behind me and wrap her arms around my waist, as the muted sounds of the doctors entering the room become louder.
“Come on, baby. We have to let the doctors get to her. She’s gone. Okay? She’s gone.” Jackie’s whispers are calm and soothing, and wracked with grief. I cling tightly to Grandma’s hand, as Jackie pulls me away with a strength I didn’t know she had. “Gavin. Please, let her go.”
She leads me away from the bed, and I hold onto Grandma’s cold, lifeless hand, until I can no longer.
My heart is broken. My spirit is gone. What more do I have left to give?
Grief is a miserable, ugly bitch. It wraps you up like cellophane, constricting you, trapping you in its suffocating embrace.
I haven’t moved much from my bed since I returned home from Brookdale the other night, hours after she had passed and her body was carted away for good. Jackie had to pull me from the bed as I just couldn’t let her go.
I still can’t.
I understand everyone’s time comes, and that she lived a full and healthy life for the most part, but it still doesn’t make the pain of her loss any easier to handle. It doesn’t make having to prepare to put her body in the ground any less heartbreaking.
Though I’d ignored most of the outside world the past two days, there were funeral arrangements to be made. I’m the only one here to do them—not that I’d want anyone else doing them regardless—and handling the subtleties of a funeral in only a few days is more work than I thought it would be. And much harder to get through. How terrible a thing it is that all you want to do is wallow when death rears its ugly head, but that’s really the last thing you can do. So many things need to be done first before you can even truly mourn.
This afternoon she will be put into the ground, with Grandpa, and dirt will be poured over her casket. And somehow, I’ll have to find the courage, the strength, to talk about this incredible woman’s life without completely losing it.
I’m slow to get ready, taking about an hour in the shower, seated on the porcelain floor and letting the water pour over me long after the hot water runs out, mindlessly cleaning myself when I can remember that’s what I’m in here to do, but most of the time is spent in recollection—poring over the days with Grandma and Grandpa when they were both alive and well, and my youthful, reckless abandon.
Without their guidance and support, I know it wouldn’t have been me burying each of them, but surely it would’ve been the other way around. I was a lost little kid before Grandma finally convinced my mom to let me and my brother Jared visit for the summer. My mother fought Grandma on it for years, solely for control purposes, but she eventually relented when I was eight years old and she realized getting rid of us for three months was a better deal than maintaining total control.
I was shocked when she delivered the news to us, two days before we were to take our very first flight ever to New York City; tickets provided by my Grandparents, of course, as they were every summer thereafter. The prospects of it were far bigger than my little mind could handle at the time, but the excitement was surreal. I felt like I was going to burst at the seams.
I hadn’t seen or gotten to know much of Grandma and Grandpa before then, beyond when they’d fly in for Christmas, so there were nerves involved too. They’d always been sweet to us, but what if they were like mom and dad when we were alone with them?
They weren’t, obviously, and the rest is history. And now, as I idly button up my white dress shirt, I can’t help but wish I had just one more day with them, together like they were, happy and so full of life. I can nearly taste the fresh sweet tea Grandma would keep out in the hot summer sun to brew for days—just the right amount of sugar added once it was finished. I can almost hear Gra
ndpa cursing up a storm from his worn recliner as the Mets shit the bed again. I can almost smell the pot roast slow cooking in the crockpot, and I can feel Grandma playfully slap my hand as I tiptoe up to the countertop with outstretched arms to investigate.
I can remember the drive-in movies from the back of Grandpa’s old Ford pickup, and I can feel the popcorn being tossed back and forth between my grandparents who were still so in love, and never took life too seriously.
I can taste the salty tears as my grandparents hug me on the last day of summer, the knowledge of the goodness that had come over three months and the evil that awaited us back home all too clear. Grandma would pat my little head as we waited to be escorted through security, cradling me tightly in her arms and she’d whisper to me that it would all be okay, that the next six months would fly by, and she’d have something very special for me upon my return—always a book. And there was always Christmas, she’d remind me. It wouldn’t take that pain in my heart away, though, as my brother and I were led away from them, knowing that we were going from the best, to possibly the worst, scenario. And we could see it in Grandma’s eyes, too. There was an unusual level of tension in them; one we’d only see in those moments when we were headed back to Chicago, back to an uncaring household. Though we never talked about life with my parents with our grandparents, they knew. You could tell just from that look they’d give.
And then the pain would strike as we were led away, like an ice pick to my chest cavity, the air sucking in and out of the wound. It’s a pain that can’t be relieved. It’s what I feel right now, as I tighten my tie and slip my arms into my suit jacket—the pain in knowing I will never see either of them again.
I have very little words for Bobby as I climb into his SUV, and an awkward silence clings to the interior as he and Cassandra pass each other knowing glances in the front seat. Bobby’s eyes repeatedly flash to me in the rearview and he looks as if he’s about to say something, but eventually refrains and his eyes fall back to the road. He doesn’t think I can see him doing it.
“What’s up, Bobby?” I say, catching him with his eyes on me again. “Something on your mind?”
“I’m just worried about you, buddy. I know how hard this is on you. You know I’m here to talk… about anything. Get you out of that house, you know?”
“The last thing in the world I want to do is talk, man. You know that. I just need to… to…”
“Internalize shit?” Bobby finishes the sentence for me, though I would’ve used different wording.
“Yeah, probably,” I quip, my eyes trailing out the window as we cruise 495 on our way to the Long Island National Cemetery. I feel an uncomfortable pressure in my chest because I know Bobby isn’t done with me yet.
“You moved all those books back yourself. Didn’t even bother calling. I told you I’d help. Told you, you could use the car. I just don’t get it, bud. Why are you so against people helping you? Especially people who love you.”
“Robert,” Cassandra whispers, putting a hand to his knee and giving it a gentle squeeze. A squeeze obviously meant to say ‘shut the hell up.’
“It’s okay, Cass. Listen, Bobby, it’s nothing against you or anyone else. It’s not that I don’t want your help. It’s just, when I’m going through this shit, I don’t like being around other people, pretending like everything’s okay. Talking about random ass shit like my world isn’t completely falling apart. You know I get like this. I thought by now you’d just come to expect and accept it.”
“I wish I could,” he says with a slight shake of his head. “I really do. But I also know the way you’ve been doing it hasn’t been working for you. And as your best friend, I feel like it’s my duty to try and change the way you think, the way you operate, because I don’t think it’s benefitting you. It really isn’t. And what kind of best friend would I be if I just sat idly by and watched you fall apart?”
“You’d be a more manageable one,” I joke, forcing a smile.
“You picked the wrong best friend if you think you can mold me to your liking.”
“Ha! Sounds like somebody needs to take a bit of their own advice. Ain’t no molding me, my friend. I come untethered and free roaming.”
“You’re a pain in my ass, is what you are.”
“And what kind of best friend would I be if I wasn’t a pain in your ass?”
It’s the look I catch him passing me through the rearview that lets me know what he’s up to. And it’s the smile on my face that lets him know it’s working. He’s not trying to have a serious talk here. He’s just trying to get my mind on anything but what’s coming in an hour’s time.
When we pull up to the cemetery gates, a wave of anxiety washes over me, nerves tingling and heart pounding. My eyes dart from window to window, trying to get my first glimpse of her casket waiting for me to put it away for good. Grandma didn’t want anything fancy—no wake, no ‘hoity toity’ reception—just her, the casket, the dirt, and her awaiting husband. She didn’t want an open casket either. She was adamant about that, and though it pained me to abide by her wishes, I feel relieved in knowing the last way I’ll remember seeing her is lying peacefully in bed with her delicate hands folded together, a smile on her face, and her pale eyes on me. The happiness radiating from her as it did from me.
Cassandra’s hand on my knee shocks me at first, and then warms my soul. She’s never taken that step from ‘friend’s girl’ to ‘actual friend’ yet, and the look of sincere compassion on her face eases my flaring nerves a little. I plop my hand down on hers and give it a squeeze before looking back out the window, taking in the autumn leaves fluttering down onto the stones.
I’m taken back to Grandpa’s funeral, in this same cemetery, just a little over five years ago. I recall the drive in, Grandma clutching my hand tightly, her head resting on my shoulder and her tears wetting my shirt. I saw a piece of her leave that day, and she was never quite whole again.
Draped in black, a veil blurring her features, Grandma approaches the coffin, lifted up off the ground and open. Her eyes fall on my uniformed grandpa, the mess of medals and awards on his chest, the smile lines still ever-present in his now waxwork-like face.
She drops a hand onto his as we all look on—the preacher, a few friends of theirs still remaining, and my brother, of all people, who I never expected to see here. He looks disheveled, weary. My mother and father aren’t here, not that I’m surprised. The only way I even know how to contact my mother is through the lawyer who manages my grandparents’ affairs. He’s the only one who gets regular updates on her ever-changing whereabouts. Gee, I wonder why. As for my father, who the hell knows where he is right now? I haven’t heard from him in years, nor would I know what to do or say if either of them did show up.
I’m relieved it’s not something I have to worry about today. For today is my first introduction to absolute heartbreak. I haven’t stopped crying since he left us, cradled in Grandma’s arms, his ragged breathing leaving no doubt that it was his time to go. I’ve had to hide these tears though, forcing them down into an unseen compartment to be dealt with at a later time.
Today, I must think about Grandma and the loss she feels, the loneliness and pain a life without her true love is causing her. She is utterly destroyed, hardly the her she was before he left us. She barely speaks. Her eyes are almost always looking away from everything around her, taking in a world unseen by the rest of us. I still read to her every night, but there’s something different without Grandpa there in his bed, Grandma lying just beside him, squeezed in between him and the hospital bed barrier. The nurses never liked when she’d sneak onto the bed with him. They were worried she might hurt him. She was more worried about the disappointment in his eyes when she’d turn him down. He’d slap the mattress beside him weakly with a wrinkled hand, the oxygen mask covering his mouth, his voice long gone. She knew just what it meant though, and she fought it at first. But the eyes eventually won out. He just wanted her near him, and she wasn’t going to ha
ve it any other way.
And that’s how he went, her head nestled against his thin chest. It rose and fell with each strangled breath until it just… didn’t. It stopped, and she remained there, helpless and weeping until the doctors pulled her away. Her tears never wavered, and neither has the lost, weary look she now carries as she stares down at Grandpa in his casket. The cold autumn wind blows the tent above us, whipping it furiously; the gray, ominous sky toiling away above us.
It’s as if he’s speaking to us, letting us know he’s still with us; still the boisterous, grandiose presence he was before.
Grandma’s breath cracks as she fights through the tears enough to speak. She takes a thick swallow, her eyes scanning our little half circle around her before they land back on him.
“I’ve thought a lot about…” Her voice cuts off, her last word echoing off into the quiet distance. “A lot about what I might say today. Thought about it for a while now since John’s been sick.”
I move closer to her, standing just behind her and placing a hand on her shoulder as she fights through the tears. She glances back at me, smiling weakly and putting a hand over mine before continuing.
“There are those moments in your life… well, no better way to put it—they come up and smack you right in the face. It’s like God telling you, ‘don’t mess this one up.’ ‘Don’t ignore my signs.’ And when John was brought into that hospital, and I looked down on him…boy, let me tell you, he was a sight indeed. He still had smudges of black ash on his face and his hands. Blood, boy, it was everywhere. He was a real mess. But it was the eyes I saw. They spoke to me. John always had this unique way of communicating with just his eyes. So, he’s lying there on the gurney, looking about as sad as I ever saw a fellow look, and he grins at me, his eyes sparkling and full of life, as if he hasn’t just broken nearly every bone in his body. He nods at me, so dang sure of himself, and he says, ‘You’re gonna be my wife one day.’ Of course, my first response is, ‘You sir, have had too much pain medication.’ But he meant it. He never did leave me alone after that.”