I guess the last memory of my grandmother, or really the last best memory, because seeing someone on their deathbed should not be considered a good memory and should, in my opinion, be one best forgotten — the last really good memory i had of my grandmother was on a freezing-cold day in January. i had asked her to go out to lunch at a cafe in a renovated firehouse in Carlisle, just down the street from her huge old green house on the corner. towards the end the house smelled a little like pee and a little like dust. it smelled like exhaustion and moth-eaten curtains. it smelled like a house that was no longer a home, just a storage vault full of memories. i picked up my grandmother from the vault and i walked her down the icy street, guiding her by the elbow as she shuffled, step by tiny little cautious step, toward the restaurant. it was a crisp, cold day, the kind of day where you think it might be warm but it isn’t. a deceptive kind of day. we walked to the restaurant and we sat down. at that point my grandmother talked very loudly because she couldn’t really tell how loudly she was talking. i remember she was practically screaming, and wearing these huge sunglasses she always had to wear when she was outside because she had macular degeneration in her eyes. we were quite a sight, my grandmother and i. i remember i ordered the quiche of the day and the waitress came over and said the special was a moroccan stew and my grandmother made me repeat it to her five times and then said, “well, i think i’ll take that.” when i told my dad later she ordered the moroccan stew he chuckled to himself and said, “now why would she order that?” i told him she liked it. she ate every last bit of it. i can’t remember one word of what we talked about and i wish i could, because i remember leaving that day and thinking i would probably never be that wise, or have been through that much, my grandmother, who lived through the Great Depression, who never owned a computer, who did the crossword every damn day of her life, who always gave me bowls of Cool Whip and Klondike bars, who knew the type of every flower just by looking at it, who refused to go to a nursing home and lived alone in a 3-story house until she died at 92, who was once addicted to oxycontin, whose daughter was an extraordinarily talented painter (a trait i, sadly, did not inherit), who once had red hair the color of a fading sunset, whose blue eyes i stare into every morning in the mirror, whose parents were off the boat from sweden; my grandmother, who was 4’8” and asked me if i were getting taller every single time i saw her, who yelled at me if i didn’t visit her, who used to take us to the penny candy store, who had a disgusting rat terrier named penny, who used to let us view old pictures on a slide projecter in the living room, who loved beer and gardening, often together; my grandmother, who, on her deathbed, asked for a preacher and when he was finished said “what now?” she taught me that in life sometimes you do end up alone, that you may not die gracefully and that nothing ever comes to you just by asking for it. but hobbies are good. friends are good. treating yourself to a nice perm every few weeks at the local hair salon: good. and moroccan stew? surprisingly good. i didn’t try it. i’d like to, someday.
