I knew my grandma was going to die. That night after my babysitters put me to bed, I don’t know how, I just knew it. It didn’t come to me like messages from God are said to come. There was no glowing light. No un-doubtable whisper in my ear. No singing angel sent to me in my dreams. Things aren’t always as black and white as that. Not everything that comes to you has a direct reasoning. It just is.
One minute I was saying my goodnight prayers, and the next I was sobbing. Once the flood gates had opened the tears didn’t stop. I pressed my face tight against my pillow, not wanting my babysitters to hear. The last thing I needed was them coming in worried, asking me what was wrong. In between tears I stifled out silent pleas to god to “Please, Please, Let her live, she doesn’t deserve to die.” The tears kept coming and coming. I wanted to stop. I wanted to tell myself I was being silly. I had no way of knowing for sure she would die that night. It wasn’t possible to know for sure. But I did. I knew I did.
At that moment I would have gave anything, everything, just to see her one more time. To talk to her. To hear her voice. I didn’t want to remember her as I saw her last, lying in her hospital bed under the spell of a deep sleep. Her lips were thin and colorless, her skin grey and cold. Her limp body was week and frail, she wasn’t the same strong grandmother who was never was sick a day in her life. Or at least never let it show. My grandma lying on the bed looked so vulnerable and hopeless. If it wasn’t for the monitor displaying her heart beat I would have thought she had already passed away, she was that still. It was her birthday, that day the last time I saw her alive. I think it is a safe bet to say that was her worst birthday ever. I could bet my money that she had no recollection my family visiting her. We brought her a little yellow teddy bear with the word grandma embroidered in pink across its chest. That Same teddy bear is sitting at my house now, one of several of our artifacts of hers.
Why does this have to be the way she goes? Why couldn’t she survive? Why does she have to be one more statistic of a life lost to cancer? You hear stories all the time of loved ones dying. You always think how tragic. But you never take into consideration that one day it could be you in that place. You with the loved one you will never be able to see again. You who's the one left grieving over a lost cause. I know I never thought it would happen to me. I thought she was invincible. Now I know that now human is invincible. Bad things happen to even the very best of people.
I fell asleep that night to the rhythmic sound of my own tears. They soaked my pillow and left trails down my cheek. They left my eyes puffy and irritated from all the rubbing and wiping. I continued to pray into the late hours of the night that she would still be alive in the morning. That she would still be alive for me to see her one more time. This soundtrack was the ending to a sad movie, one that leaves everybody crying, it is a melody nobody wants to hear because even I knew it was hopeless.