The Last Time

This is a piece that I wrote for submission to the “Readers Write” section in The Sun magazine.

———

I would say that my grandmother battled cancer for nearly two years before it finally killed her, but that sentiment would be too strong. From the time of her initial diagnosis, she was never the same. Her smile was forced, her hospitality perfunctory. She was dying, she knew it, and it scared her. She went through course after course of chemotherapy at her doctors’ suggestion, but it was only effective in throwing her emotions into a see-saw and causing her memory to be faulty—and she never once believed that it would help her. No one expected her to be happy about having cancer, but she had been such a feisty, hot-tempered woman throughout her life. This was probably going to be the last fight of her life. We all thought that she would go out swinging, rather than only going through the motions, never fully intending to win.

My grandmother’s seventy-sixth and final birthday fell while I was on a trip to Portland, Oregon visiting my boyfriend’s family. I called her to wish her well, but my grandfather answered the phone and told me that she had gone to the hospital that morning. He gave me the number of her room so I could call there. When I called, she was sometimes incoherent, sometimes herself, alternately asking me how Oregon was or talking about birds coming to carry her off.

When I arrived home two days later, I rushed to my parents’ house so that I could go see her at the hospital first thing in the morning. She was a wreck: thin and frail, wide-eyed with a terrible sweetness on her breath. She was heavily medicated and would slip in and out of consciousness and coherence. My boyfriend left the room so that she and I could talk, and in one of her more lucid moments, I asked her if she was scared. She replied, “No, Grandma’s not scared,”—she had always referred to herself in the third person—“I just want to get this over with.” She smiled at me, and we both cried. I knew that she was lying, just as she had throughout her “battle” with cancer, but I loved her for still trying to protect me from the pain of not being able to help her. It was the first time that I had seen the grandmother that I knew since she had been diagnosed.

When I left the hospital, I knew that it would be the last time I saw her—she died at home two days later.

This website uses IntenseDebate comments, but they are not currently loaded because either your browser doesn't support JavaScript, or they didn't load fast enough.

Leave a Comment