Now, and at the Hour of Our Death

I was watching from the front windows. Late summer, scorching hot. But the sun was telling on itself, lazily sliding to the tops of the pines closer to a pan-fried walleye dinner hour than before. Soon there will be a bite in the morning air, and we’ll mention with surprise a few rogue leaves turning crimson early.

Ninety degrees. Not a breeze. The ripples that echoed out from her on the surface of the water made perfect concentric circles. She had a small smile on her face as she bobbed up and down on a noodle floatie, each end sticking out of the water, like she was sitting on the letter U.

“Old lady suit,” she had muttered to me earlier, a look of disapproval flashing in her black eyes as she fit her water shoes on her feet before walking with a spring down to the beach. I hadn’t thought so. It was black and dotted with the idea of magenta and royal purple flowers — all her colors. I was too busy marveling at her beauty, her dexterity, and her zest.

Even when it is hot, the water can be chilly that far north, that first dip underwater sucking the air from your lungs. She never seemed to lose her breath or wince the way I do. She waded in the Band-Aid way: Just ripping off whatever survival instinct is left before submitting to the frigid waterline that cuts at your thighs. Fearless. Steady. No bullshit. No blinking.

I watched as she let the water drip from her outstretched, manicured fingers, and I think she thought she was alone. But I was there with her, in a way.

She was immortal. Or so we thought. She came from pretty long-lived stock, and she just never seemed to age. She barely had wrinkles, even in her 90s, her tan skin gleaming under the sun. I never really knew her without gray hair, but my mom tells a story of how she first saw her, emerging from a salon in a cloud of hairspray under a jet-black bouffant with a big swoop to the side.

She was sexy and she owned it.

So when Grandma said that she had stage four colon cancer, and that she was opting not to treat it owing to her age, she said it with total confidence, and without detectable emotion. Her voice was that warm nasal crackle it always was. Nothing, and everything, had changed. She told me not to make it weird, that we should just be normal.

Good luck on that for me, Grandma, was what I thought. But I smiled and squeezed her hand, and then I jumped into my sister’s pool so that I would not cry.

We did not always see from the same perspective. She didn’t understand why I didn’t baptize my children, for example. And I had long since decided not to discuss social justice issues with her and instead tried to keep it light. And I never asked her about some finer points of her life’s decisionmaking, because I never had the courage — even when she was dying — and didn’t want to argue.

It wasn’t that she was a Fox News-watching creep. I just knew that it was enough of a difference that it could erode away a softness that I was having a hard time hanging onto — not just with her, but with the entire world.

That said, when I gathered a bunch of my fury and directed at misogynist men in elected office, she was thrilled. “I would have never dreamed…” she marveled once, trailing off in something of what I think was admiration for my rule-breaking. She picked back up with a little fire: “You tell ’em, Kates.”

But when I dyed my hair red, she made a squiggle motion in the air around my head, like a crooked halo, and said, “I’m not sure what you’re trying to accomplish there.” I said, “I think I accomplished it, Gram, I have red hair now,” trying to toe the line between playful sassiness and signaling finality on the topic.

When I drove her to my baby shower, she turned to me and said, “Wow, Kate, I really never thought I’d see the day. You. Fat.”

I was shocked. It took every atom of my being not to stew through the whole event or lecture her on the difference between fat and pregnancy and furthermore, we don’t body shame in this car or anywhere! A rant ran through my head as I steered onto the exit. This was a woman, I reminded myself, who once did Richard Simmons’ Deal-a-Meal religiously and guiltily ate chocolate chips out of her cabinet for a sugar fix when she had emptied her cupboard of sweets. She was a victim, thinking that her worth was tied to the size of her blue jeans. Still. For better or worse, I rarely let go of anything. It took me a long time to get over it.

When she called and got my voicemail, she always said the same thing, a sunny “Hiya Kates! Grandma called!” with a heavy click of the receiver. I still have one.

My sister, the saint, promised her we would help her stay home until she died. She did the lion’s share of the caretaking. All of it, really. And then Grandma got what she wished. In the face of the pandemic, we all tried to safely visit, but not be there too much. Trying not to kill a person who is actively dying. In short, it sucked. It was not the way to see a person off who once had come to your rescue when you thought someone broke into your house. Have you ever called your Grandma in a situation in which you’ve definitely qualified from a bullet-point list of conditions in the When to Call 911 Rulebook? Well, I did, from my parents’ closet. And she showed up, unafraid, and stayed parked on the couch until my mom got home. She told me she’d tap on my bedroom window when she arrived, so as not to be confused with a burglar. She must have cackled her whole way to my house, just a few blocks away.

Grandma always came to everything she was invited to, and was a good sport.

I called her the day she came home from the surgery that would relieve the blockage giving her pain, the last medical intervention before we gave her the drugs to make her comfortable. I said we had made tons of dinner and I’d love to bring her some. I ended up calling her three times before coming over, to ask questions about other things she needed or wanted to be comfortable. The last time I called, aware that I’m a pain in the ass, I joked, “You can’t get rid of me today, Gram!”

“I wouldn’t want toooooo,” she sing-songed back. I hit the mental record button in my brain.

Her death was mercifully quick. Should we all live to our mid-90s, in full control of our brains and bodies. Just two days before, my uncle reported she had cleaned out a closet and tootled her little navy-blue Saturn to Walgreen’s to pick up a few things. I’d bet my firstborn she went in a full face of makeup, and I know her nails were done in a sparkly taupe. Never let them see you sweat.

I got the call to come, that it was probably time to say goodbye. I knelt on the carpet next to her recliner, where she was mumbling a Hail Mary with her eyes closed. She was leaving, there was no doubt.

“Grandma?” I ventured, not expecting an answer.

“Yes, Kates!” she replied, not missing a beat. She hadn’t even opened her eyes, and even with my sister my voice twin, she knew it was me.

A quick silence, as I hadn’t really prepared anything for this moment. She jumped in.

“I don’t really know what to tell you about all of this,” she said, as though she had planned to explain the mysteries of death to me but ran out of time. A resignation, a shrug. The to-do list was done.

I willed myself not to cry, not to let my voice crack. I am terrible at this. I tear up at an embarrassing amount of things, from live rock songs to pet-food commercials, but my grandmother’s general distaste for sentimentality must have fortified my emotional wall.

“It’s OK. I came here to tell YOU something.”

“OK.”

“I love you, Grandma. We are here with you. And it’s OK.”

“I love you,” she said, with a warmth that spreads like molasses in my brain, even two years later.

She never opened her eyes, and picked back up with her Hail Mary. To my surprise, she also continued to hang tight to my hand. When she trailed off, I summoned the history of my Catholic catechism and helped her finish the prayer.