Grandma

Two days ago, at about 8:30 in the morn­ing, my mom called me at work. It took me a few sec­onds to rec­og­nize her voice; she sound­ed very, very down. Before she said it, I knew what she was going to tell me.

My grand­moth­er had gone into the hos­pi­tal the night before. Now Mom was call­ing to tell me that she had died.

It still has­n’t real­ly sunk in for me. I think that’s part­ly because I don’t have a lot of mem­o­ries of Grand­ma here in Bran­don. When I get to Win­nipego­sis, where the funer­al’s being held, I think that’s when it’s real­ly going to sink in that she’s gone.

One day I’ll write about some of the mem­o­ries I have of Grand­ma. Right now I want to share some­thing Mom told me.

I’ve been work­ing on a project called Every­thing that Nev­er Hap­pened. It’s an online ser­i­al nov­el, and it’s been run­ning since March 20^th. Grand­ma and Grand­pa don’t have a com­put­er, so Mom’s been print­ing off the chap­ters as they appear and tak­ing them out to the farm for Grand­ma to read. The oth­er night, I think Monday–just before Grand­ma went into the hospital–she was read­ing the lat­est chap­ter. She was very tired–she was usu­al­ly tired, these days; she was­n’t sleep­ing well. Mom said, “You know, you can have a sleep, and read that lat­er.” But Grand­ma insist­ed on fin­ish­ing it first. Mom went and got her cam­era, and snapped a pho­to of Grand­ma read­ing my sto­ry. Grand­ma was so absorbed she did­n’t even know till lat­er that Mom had tak­en her picture.

It’s the last pho­to they have of her, Mom says.

Last night I was feel­ing a lit­tle down. I knew that if I want to stay ahead on the nov­el that I’d have to write a chap­ter, but I just was­n’t real­ly into it. Then I thought of the woman who was one of my biggest fans, and the words just kind of flowed. I love when that hap­pens; it makes me feel like I’m on the right track, and noth­ing can move me off it.

Good night, Grand­ma. Sleep well. I love you.