“Come on Evelyn, we will sit in the waiting room,” says my grandmother. My grandma gets up as my aunt Evelyn follows her out the door. “Hey Ma.” I give her a kiss on her cheek. “Hey,” she says. I grab her fragile hand and hold it. “How are you?” “I’m good, just a little under the weather.” There’s finally an open chair by her bed that was once before occupied by my grandmother and other family members. All of our family has been coming to see her so the room and the hallway become crowded quickly. The hospital staff started limiting the number of people allowed in the room. I hate that. They know that she’s dying. “Ma, who is that?” “Ma?” “Do you know who that is”, my mom asks. She turns her head and looks at me. She smiles and turns her head back. “Yea, I know who that is.” She doesn’t say my name, but it makes me smile. “I love you Ma.” “I love you too”. I give her another kiss on he cheek, and walk out the room. We spent the rest of the night laughing and trying to get her to talk and laugh. We had fun. My older cousins picked with each other about how only one of them never got popped by Ma. She laughed. They brought up memories that made everyone laugh uncontrollably. That night was fun. The nurse that was working that night told us she might die later today. We don’t leave until later that night because we want to be with her if anything happens. My mom thinks that she going to die later on tonight too, but I don’t think so. I don’t think she’s ‘tired’ yet. I can tell by how she smiles when family walks in that she stills wants to be with us for a little while longer.

I feel horrible, I can hardly move. I’m pretty sure my mom gave me the flu, but that doesn’t stop life from happening. “Afrika, grandma says we need to go to the nursing home.” I know you don’t feel good but do you want to come?” “Yeah sure, just give me a minute because it’s going to take me a while to get dressed.” For the third time we rush to the hospital. I can hardly walk. We walk in the bright-lit nursing home and skip signing in like we do every time we get an emergency call. I walk in the room and see family. I look at my great grandmother and she looks like she’s trying to sleep, but it looks as if it’s very hard for her to breathe. You can see her cheekbones clear as day. Its like she has no flesh in her face at all anymore. My mom walks in behind me and immediately walks back out in tears. I couldn’t hear her conversation. I wanted to sit in the room with her but there weren’t many chairs, and I couldn’t stand for long. I end up asking my mom if she will sit with me in the lounge and she says yes. We sit in the lounge for a few more hours and my family comes to sit with us and compliment me on how horrible I look. We get home and I go straight to sleep. No one came to wake me, so I assume that she made it through the night.

I wake up still not feeling the best but a little better. I walk into my closet and slip on my stockings. I put on my undershirt. I walk into the bathroom and brush my teeth and flat iron and comb my hair. I put on some mascara. I walk back in to my room and into my closet and slip on my black dress. I grab my gray Hollister sweater off the hanger and put it on. I grab my new black flats with small black stones on the brim of my shoe. I get something to drink and walk outside. I try and prepare myself to know that my beautiful and amazing great grandmother will be separated from me for the rest of my life, never to see her again.