The Waterslide

To put it simply, my grandmother died last night. She’d been in and out of the “almost” phase for months, so it wasn’t too much of a surprise, but difficult nonetheless. This was my immediate family’s first “family” death.

My sister called me this morning a few minutes before eleven. After alternating stares between my then boyfriend lying in the bed next to me and the cottage cheese ceiling above me for about fifteen minutes, I mustered the energy to get my wide ass out of bed to call her back and wish her a happy new year on this first day of 2007.

We talked like sisters do about how the older guy she was seeing had told her he loved her in a drunken text message and how that’s not something anyone does to anyone regardless of our parental situation. I was proud of her for being angry because that meant that she was taking a stand for herself and anger represented the seed of self-love that would soon blossom into full blown confidence. I was excited by her petulance, yet wary of another boy bruising her heart. (Our family doesn’t believe in broken hearts, only temporary bruises.)

Somehow our conversation came to whether or not she had to work today and she told me she called in to say she wouldn’t be working today, so naturally, I asked her why and she told me in the secretive way she does when she’s been instructed not to tell her “psychologist sister” the gory details of our family life, “I’m probably not supposed to tell you this, but Grandma died last night.” Being the selfish weakling that I am at times, instead of asking how dad was doing or even how she was doing considering she’d taken off work, I choked, then told her I’d call her back in a bit and that I needed a moment. Afterwards, I stumbled into the guest bedroom at my boyfriend’s parents’ house and just collapsed into the bed where he lay fast asleep. As soon as he heard me crying, he jumped up, grabbed me, and cuddled me close rocking me back and forth.

After a while of laying there, the thing happened that everyone talks about. Memories of my grandmother flooded my brain. There was no filter either; the memories were positive and negative. I remembered the times she’d scolded me for bossing my siblings around and then I remembered the time Dad, J2, and I delivered her this intricately detailed dollhouse Dad had crafted to accommodate her entire collection of miniatures.