Parting Gifts

Yesterday was the first time that I didn’t share a birthday with my grandmother. Six months after we were too late in finding her cancer; terminal, malignant. The time she had was measured in weeks, not months. No one bothered humoring her with percentages for survival, and we knew better than to ask.

Her once strong features; a feral mane of silver hair, bright amber eyes, and her radiant smile. Features that had been captured for posterity on her funerary program for eternity, had withered away like a dessicated bouquet.

Thirteen years ago yesterday my grandmother had given me the first of those little black notebooks. New and wrapped in newspaper. Full of endless possibility. I had asked her if it were a diary. She had said yes, if I used it as one. I spent the next year doodling, making up stories about places and things that did and did not exist. A year after that first notebook, I gave it to her as a birthday present and received another black, crisp notebook wrapped in the Sunday comics.

Our tradition stayed alive. Years went on and my notebooks were less of the random doodles and machinations of an adolescent mind, and became a year-long letter to my grandmother.

I didn’t expect the package slip that came in the mail on my first lonely birthday. I didn’t expect that I would have to pick it up from the post office either. Priority, First Class and Insured. And what should have been a quick two mile drive, had my car not been lacking a working transmission, gave me time to reflect on what we would have spoken about. How would I have told her that the job that I loved, that was like a second family for two years had been shuttered indefinitely for reasons far beyond anyone's control?

The return address was from my grandmother’s house, though it was written in my father’s forlorn and utterly ragged script, heavy with the long days and sleepless nights from sorting through his mother’s estate. Seeing his scrawl ripped open old emotional scars that had laid dormant for the last three years. But, inside the parcel were my old notebooks that my father had gathered, along with two packages and an envelope bearing my name. Within the envelope my grandmother shook out her last goodbye.

Although I’ll be gone when you read, this remember that I’m still looking out for you. This is the last notebook you’ll be getting from me, you’re grown now and will have to get your own from here on, sorry kiddo. I know you and your father have not been on speaking terms; I don’t fault you for your feelings. Remember, forgiveness is not letting go of your pain, but learning to live with it.

Love Always…

I spent hours leafing through the old notebooks. Finding that she had filled in her own thoughts and musings in the margins, and spaces between text and pictures. I read through our twelve year conversation. Even the books from my angst ridden, brooding years were peppered with her echoing wit.

It wasn’t until near midnight. While the distant sounds of inebriated students were muffled in the warm, summer breeze I stared at the last two gifts I would receive from my grandmother. An eternity passed before I could bring myself to open the last notebook. I did so with surgical precision, as if tearing the paper would rip apart the time we had shared. This last notebook bore my name in gold lettering.

The second package felt strange. I felt uneasy by the weight, the density of it was utterly foreign. I had been expecting boxes of pens that had accompanied the notebooks on more than one occasion. Care and curiosity grappled my stomach as I opened the paper surrounding her final gift. The last thing I would ever receive from her. Inside was a stack of green paper with crisp edges. When I pulled the corner free, I dropped the barely-opened package. The newspaper wrapping split against the linoleum floor and two hundred, hundred dollar bills spilled out like shards of glass onto the small, dingy kitchen. That was when I dropped to my knees, swearing at her ghost and wept.