This is How Memories Live

In her final few days in hospice care, I can remember the last time she opened her eyes and recognized me.

She opens her eyes when you grab her hand and say “grandma.” Today would be the last time I would look into her eyes and know that she saw me for me. My mom was leaning over her and with one hand holding grandmas and another hand stroking her hair. “Grandma, Brian is here,” she said. In the hospice room, my grandma lay, eyes closed on her right side, back to me. My mother at her side, holding her hand,

“Oh, Brian!” in a weak but assertive voice, with squinting eyes and parched lips.

“Do you need some water?” my mom asks, as she brings a small sponge on a straw to her mouth to wet her lips and tongue.

Grandma closes her eyes and every few mins, she abruptly stops breathing. ‘What’s happening,’ I think swallowing my fear.

She breathes deeply. I did not expect that.

Although I cannot fully understand her, my grandma talks, mutters a few words:

“Utahh,” she trails off. “Need to know…Favorite… not my favorite.” And a phrase that hangs on my heart, “I just want you to understand.”

My uncle walks into the room and upon hearing the last word says, “yup, that’s me, her favorite.” He chuckles with a large exhaust of air… “Both her favorite, and not her favorite,” and smiles at me.

What impresses my mind the most or what makes the deepest feelings in my heart, is watching my father and uncles interact with their mother. There is a kindness in their actions I've never seen before. so patient. But not just that, it's something I see on their faces that makes me pause. There is an intuitive understanding that I feel at the center of my being. There is a patient feeling, an unwavering feeling of longing to be near to someone you know is leaving. It is why goodbyes are so hard.

I try to look deeply upon my grandma.

"Oh... hi Brian," she said with squinting eyes as I walk around the bed to see her face. The color had been fading from her face since she left the hospital, and the weakness was apparent in her slow actions and responses.

I hear the word “home.” I want to believe that she has said, “I feel like I’m going home” or “I’m glad I’m home.” There is really no way to know. I hope for a moment of clarity, just one more perfect conversation with her, like when she used to call me at college. I used to sit in the school quad and talk to her, knowing I had other things to do but understanding how important these conversations were to both of us.

Now she’s speaking about her mother. “How old was she,” my mom asks.

Grandma mumbles something I can’t understand. Her eye brows raise and lips tighten.. a smile perhaps.

“I want to remember some of this,” my uncle says to my father, “but I keep forgetting to write it down.”

I pull out a pen and my pocket journal and write frantically but quietly. I’ll remember for him.

They roll her from the side she is on to the other side.

“Water,” she says softly, and my mom leans her ear close to my grandmothers mouth.

“Do you want some water,” my uncle asks.

“She’s talking about being around the water,” my mom says.

Occasionally my mom looks up at me and smiles in a way I’ve never seen before. Ever sweet a smile as I’ve seen before. Something else in her eyes, a wisdom perhaps, I don’t understand.

My mom picks up a small stick with a sponge the size of a dime and dips it into the water. “Here’s some water” as she places it on her lips and tongue. Grandma closes her mouth slowly around the sponge and sucks. “Here’s some more,” and repeats.

Even as I now write, I am trying not to miss the unique and solemn moment in every movement, every sound, and all the feelings being expressed in this room.

My mom smiles as she looks up at my father. Grandma is telling a story, but though I cannot understand her words, I sense it is a good memory. Then I understand my mother for a moment.

“Come-on, let’s go,” grandma says.

She would pass away a few days later.

There was an uncertainty in my heart as I went to visit her for the last time. My belief in life, my faith, tells me that death is nothing to fear. But until that day, I knew death only as a concept or a word. This is where death became real to me and I know that the burden of death is really only for the living.

My grandmother was special. I love her. It feels now like she merely boarded a ship to another place. As I look for her from my shore, I see only the light of the sun and the memory of her face as it disappeared from my view. She has begun another journey.