A Premature Goodbye

Grammie in 1948 - her 28th year.

Tonight I felt that feeling for the first time in a long time. I was talking to Grammie on the phone. She isn't sounding so good these days. Her voice was shakey and she rambled off a story, sounding anxious, almost frantic. Something about high blood pressure and Xanax and not getting her teeth cleaned at the dentist.


It started in my heart, like someone pulled the drain plug and all of my raw emotion came gushing out in three seconds flat. Once the dust settled I was left with a cold, aching hole in my chest. I sat there in silence listening to her mousey little voice and wishing I could bottle it up and save it forever. I can't imagine not being able to call her up and hear that tiny little voice tell me about the latest neighborhood gossip and which NBA players are on her bad list for having illegitimate children and not paying child support. I can't imagine going to her house and her not being there, asleep in her chair in the back room with soap operas on full blast and her decrepit old yorkie greeting us at the door with a hacking cough. I will miss our accupuncture dates laying face down with needles in our butt and laughing till we cried because we could never remember the name of the chinese lady and she always thought it was "Chewey".


That sickening realization that something beautiful may soon be coming to an end. 


I swear it was last week I was four years old playing with the hose in her front yard and watching Nick Jr. with Tanner in diapers. Now we sit on lawn chairs in her driveway and watch my daughter chase squirrels across her lawn and pick the leaves off of her azaleas. And in a blink I will be ninety-two looking back over my life, all of the beautiful moments and the painful ones too, like this one. I'll remember how I felt today. The feeling that life is wonderfully perplexing and that time is so fleeting. I want to inhale every second of it.




(I'm happy to report that what I thought was her imminent death turned out to be a simple change in blood pressure medicine. Grammie is alive and well and we're expecting her around for another 92 years.)