holding hands

Dear God, take Gramma home to John, Freddie, Kenny, and Florence soon, and let her pain be over.

Mein seestor and I took a huge risk driving out to say farewell, but we made it.  Amoungst laughter and tears we have all taken turns sitting with Gramma, talking and singing to her, and chasing the nurses down to make sure her meds are administered on time.   We take turns at her bedside day and night, stroking her hands and arms, and making enough racket to wake up half the senior's lodge (which the nurses assure us isn't an issue since they take out all of their hearing aids at night.)  As she lays motionless save for the beating of her heart and her shallow breaths,  we can't help but be reminded of all the times she said, "I'm not napping - I can listen with my eyes closed," and the banter has been as loud, happy, and joyful as usual.

When my Daddy died, Gramma lamented, "Why couldn't it have been me?" She has been saying for a very long time now that she is ready to go - she wants to see John (her husband) and the three children who died before her, Freddie and Kenny and Florence.   She is in a lot of pain, her breathing is laboured, and she is unable to communicate, and yet she is still holding on.  It is both astonishing and heartbreaking.  We have often referred to her lovingly as the 'stubborn old bird.'

When I was about 8 years old, I noticed my fingers were very crooked, and far from dainty.  I used to tie popsicle sticks to my fingers with pieces of wool in the hopes that if I couldn't have dainty fingers, at least I'd have straight ones.  About 10 years ago I wrote a piece of 'postcard' prose. I had meant to enter it into a contest, but never did; I had all but forgotten about it until today when I was holding Gramma's hands:

Here are my Nana’s hands, washing the dishes. Here are her knobby knuckles and liver spots wiping gravy from this plate. Here are the translucent, powder white hands with the bulging purple veins popping just beneath the thin skin, dunking this plate in the rinse water. Here are the fingers with the bones as brittle as the china they hold, placing the dishes to the tea towel on the counter to be dried. Nana calls me to her and takes each of my tiny hands in each of her wrinkled hands and kisses their backs, and when she lets go she has pressed a creamy mint into each of my palms and she shoos me away with a sly wink. Nana’s hands, cool and smooth like polished stone or glass collected from the ocean where it has been worn by the sand beneath the waves of the rolling sea. Only they aren’t Nana’s hands. They are mine.

Dear Gramma, You have 99 and a half years on this planet already, and you're in the home stretch.  Please, go see your husband and the three children you outlived.  Tell my Daddy I say, "Hi!  Pull my finger..."