Narrative of My Grandmother That Died in the Hospital

Narrative

The phone rang. I watched the red light on the device flash intermittently, and was momentarily paralyzed. A dizzying array of buttons stared back at me from the black plastic receiver, and I wished the noise would go away. I looked down at my grandmother. She did not seem to notice the phone at all. She had barely shown any sign of consciousness today, although her eyes were open and I saw her chest rising and falling as methodically as a metronome.

A nurse appeared in the doorway.

"It's your father," she said firmly, looking directly in my eyes. "How's she doing?"

Startled out of my temporary paralysis, I replied reluctantly that my grandmother was "okay," not really knowing what to say given that there were only degrees of badness at this point.

"Your father said he's on his way," the nurse simply stated before walking away, leaving me alone once more with my grandmother.

I felt afraid. Grandmother looked so frail and I could see the veins beneath her skin. Father was coming. I did not want to see him now, but I wanted to keep my spirits high so I put on the television in the hopes that it would offer a diversion from the misery that was my grandmother in her dying days.

My eyes darted back and forth between the television and the soft, wrinkled face of my grandmother.

"In other news today, a man was shot on the corner of 57th Street and 49th Avenue. The suspect was seen driving a red SUV. If you have any tips, please call Crimestoppers."

My grandmother was obviously not paying attention to the television. I wondered what she could be thinking about. Was she thinking about that time we had a family dinner at Red Lobster and my brother found a cockroach in his salad? She laughed so hard I saw tears coming out of the corner of her eyes. What about the time she took me to baseball practice? I was mortified when she started yelling at me when I dropped the ball in mid-field. I had no idea she was a baseball fan, but there she was, my 5' tall grandma cheering for our team in the stands. Half my friends thought she was crazy. The other half thought she was cool.

"Sonny…" I suddenly heard her say. Her voice was so weak it sounded like a hallucination but I looked over and her hand was outstretched. I turned down the volume on the television and scooted my chair over to sit closer and hold my grandma's hand. Her hand was cold, pink, and blue from the veins. There was an IV tube sticking out of her wrist. The cataracts in her eyes prevented me from really seeing into her soul. The fear inside me grew. Now I wanted my father here.

Grandma kept opening her mouth a little as if she wanted to say something. I knew she wanted to talk. She hadn't been this quiet since I knew her. If she had just one glass of wine, she would not shut up. Grandmother could be the life of the party if she wanted to. I started to picture her before she was old. It was hard to do, because I only knew her as an old lady. To see my grandmother as a young woman of my mother's age was really hard to do. So I used my imagination and saw a spunky woman who charmed men and women alike. She still did that now…well, not now but she still did that before her health took a turn for the worse.