"A million, huh? That's a lot."
"Gran loves flowers."
Instantly I resolved to find one million flowers. Or, at least, as close as I could get with a budget and two day's notice...
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"Gran? It's Chad. Mandy said yes!"
"Tell my new granddaughter welcome to the family." Warmth infused me, bubbling up to join the crazy-love feeling of the newly engaged.
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"This is in LA." I took the picture from Gran's hands and studied it. A striking brunette sat on the sand, her eyes squinting into the sun while two boys, all angles and elbows, played nearby. One of those boys grew into my children's grandfather.
"You're beautiful," I tell her. And so young. Doing a little mental math, I realized she must have been in her early twenties that sunny day on the beach. She laughed my words away quietly; always quiet when I knew her.
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I lay Joseph gently in her arms, a cloth draped over her shoulder. I hovered over her, exhausted, swollen, sweaty. She was tiny and birdlike, but her arms cradled his fragile body with a confidence I didn't feel. She told me of her mother's death from childbirth fever and of her aunts putting a tiny baby in her eight-year-old arms, telling her the baby was her responsibility now. She'd been holding babies for more than seventy-three years. I relaxed and breathed.
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Elizabeth led her around by the hand. Up and down the sidewalk to the play house. She went inside and poked her head out to Gran, giggling at their game of peekaboo. "Do you want me to take her?" I asked, sure Gran was getting tired.
"No. She's fine." And the game began again and again.
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"I'm going to go live in Gran's guest house."
"Is she cool with it?"
"Yeah. I think it'll be for the best. The kids can come over on the weekend." My heart constricted at the idea that this was our new normal. Three nights a week, the kids would leave me to be with their dad. I looked at Elizabeth playing nearby. She wasn't even two and her dad was struggling. On his best days, his idea of cooking dinner was a can of beans and tortillas. How could I let him take my babies? How could I not?
Gran will be there. I reminded myself. Gran will make sure they have vegetables and salad, milk and eggs. Gran will make sure they eat all three meals and take naps.
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Elizabeth came home from her nights with Chad bedecked in costume jewelry. "Where did you get that?"
"Gran!" Her smile was wide above giant gems and between dangling clip on earrings. Her wrists were covered with bracelets and her hair, her beautiful hair, was a mass of perfect ringlets.
"Who fixed your hair?"
"Gran did it." Later, I asked Chad about it and he said she sat with Elizabeth after her bath and twined each curl around her finger, holding it until it set and then moving on to the next one, sometimes taking an hour of patience and love to get it perfect.
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I knew Gran was getting older. It was evident in our conversations. She started to forget things, got quieter, if that was possible. Still, she didn't look older. It was as if she was frozen at 75.
And then she fell.
I'd heard that's how it starts. A broken hip, a surgery, a long slide. She rallied. This was the woman, after all, who still hiked when I met her while she was in her seventies. She got more forgetful, more frail.
Chad worried about her, worried taking a job that would require him to move wouldn't be a good idea. Four years had passed since he'd moved into her guest house. He was stronger, happier, stable. He feed the kids salads and made sure they have milk. He put sunblock on their little bodies and signed them up for classes. He was ready to leave the nest. She was ready for him to move forward.
Then, another fall, a broken back.
We were told she wasn't going to be able to come home. At work, friends who have been through this before tried to tell me, but I didn't understand. Gran was always there: on the couch during holidays with her camera held to her face; at the table next to Chad at Thanksgiving, dishing tiny bits of food onto her plate; following the kids as their growing bodies outpaced her.
She fell again on Elizabeth's birthday.
And then, on Sunday, August 9th, Gran passed away.
I shouldn't have been surprised. And yet, as I listened to Chad with the phone in one hand while the forgotten hose hung limp in my other, flooding the garden while the world shifted a bit.
I feel my awkward position. A part of Chad's family - thanks to the love of my in-laws who, even if they didn't understand, accepted the way Chad and I have decided to move forward - but still, not quite a full member. My first thought was for the kids who have lived part of each week with her for four years. Was it a blessing, I wondered, that she'd been in a home for three months, allowing them to slowly begin to say good bye - even if they weren't aware of the shift?
And, at the same time, I know the last few months have been particularly rough on the adults. Chad told me she was hallucinating, seeing people who had died years before, seeing her children and grandchildren at much younger ages, but still recognizing those around her.
Oddly, it makes me feel better.
Death haunts us all. It's the specter over our shoulders with the long black robes. Still, if death comes with the visage of loved ones, with the peace of being in a happier place in your timeline, surrounded by those who love and have loved you, there's peace there. And maybe, maybe, a small amount of joy in a life long lived.
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"I changed my mind."
"You did?"
"I want ninety flowers. One for every birthday."
"I think that's a lovely idea, Elizabeth."
"White ones to match Gran's new wings."
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