I’m not one for sappy or overly-sentimental moments. Leave them for the maple trees and the sorry movies. But once in a while you have that sensation you just can’t shake. That moment that really gets to you and lights you up inside, as if the universe takes a big, deep breath and sighs with relief.
Something had been different this night. Something lighter in the air. Something energized and upbeat in the voices of my mother and my aunt. The two of them were at my grandmother’s house when I called. They sounded upbeat and joked on the phone with my daughter Amelie — listening to her say “hi,” “bye,” and other mangled bits of a language called “Toddlerish.”
Something felt good.
For the past couple of months, my grandmother’s health has been failing. To be blunt, her body was shutting down. Not slowly and gradually — she was dying fast. Hospice was caring for her at home, and my mother and aunt were with her constantly. I had already gone to Tampa to say my goodbyes.
There’s nothing tougher than waiting on death. Every time the phone rings, you answer it with stiff shoulders and ears that don’t want to touch the receiver. When family members talk, they sound tired, monotone and mournful. There is no joy. It’s agonizing and tedious. It hurts and wears you out.
But something was different this night, as if we had all let our guard down. Like we allowed, for just a moment, ourselves to breathe and relax. It felt like things would be all right, and it felt good. We laughed as a family, and I wonder now if we somehow knew.
It wasn’t a minute or two after we had hung up the phone that it rang back. My mother was leaving to feed her cats when she looked in on my grandmother. She wasn’t breathing.
Like that it was all over.
I thought it fitting that there would be joy, not sorrow, during her last breath. I wish someone had been there with her when she passed, but I know she would have liked it better this way. She liked to see people smile and hear them laugh. So how wonderful for that to be the last sound she heard. I hope I’m that lucky one day.
We held a gathering this past weekend. We left her walking cane next to her favorite chair — the one where she sat so often watching Spanish soap operas and trying to keep her little dog still. Like always, there was the bowl of Hershey’s kisses on the coffee table, and we reminisced about the funny little Cuban lady.
I choked up while trying to watch a photo DVD of her — it was a shot with my brother and me as kids.
As photos rolled through, there was another one of her at a holiday dinner, seated at the head of my mother’s elegantly-set dining room table. Her head rested on a hand. The look was priceless, as if she was wondering if she was really related to all these crazy people. Sometimes at Christmas dinner, she would get tired of listening to us and turn off her hearing aid so she could sip her wine in peace.
That was my grandmother, an absolute original. She called me “Don Brian” and my brother “Don Scott” — it’s Spanish for “Mr.” There were many other Spanish words she called us, but none are printable here. She had a gift for facial expressions, and a truly infectious laugh. Toward the end, her memory was going, but the sight of little Amelie always brought her tremendous joy. Just a couple weeks before she died, that little girl could still make her smile.
Boy, do I miss her.
I will never forget that moment we all shared on the phone, when this family joined together for a laugh and simultaneously let go — that moment when the universe took a deep breath and sighed with relief. It’s how my grandmother would have wanted it, and I can’t help but think she went with a smile.