It was the first time I understood that my grandmother was dying. I say that I understood. I didn’t understand. I was told, but I didn’t understand. I had taken the morning flight out of Boston, and that afternoon, gone to visit her at the hospital in Inglewood. Her hospital room had not looked or felt like a hospital room at all; it had, in fact, reminded me of a cathedral: it was spacious, it had tall ceilings, and the walls were all bare, except for a calendar that had been hung too high. I distinctly remember my aunt, who was there with me that day, standing on her toes to reach the calendar. She had a pen her hand, and was crossing out the days that had passed. I asked her why she was doing this, and she replied, “So Mom will know what day it is.”
One year later, I fly out to California to visit my grandmother again. This time, she is not at the hospital in Inglewood, but at the nursing home on Washington. This time, I am a mother, and my daughter is with me. The lightless building smells of urine, and I am immediately put on edge by the sound of someone moaning. I locate my grandmother’s room. Her eyes come to life when she sees my daughter. I place the baby down next to her, on the bed with the thin white blanket and the metal rails, and feel uneasy about it. This room, unlike the other, is not spacious, nor does it have tall ceilings; it has three beds separated by floor-length curtains, three televisions, and I can’t remember whether or not there is a calendar on the wall. Another resident is also having visitors, and they are speaking to one another in Spanish. On our way out, I encounter a toothless man being wheeled down the hall. He sticks out a finger to touch my baby’s cheek. I let him, and feel uneasy about it.
It is on this same visit to California that someone, I can’t recall who, transports my grandmother from the nursing home on Washington to my aunt’s house, in Cheviot Hills, where we celebrate her final birthday. My grandmother’s body is slack, and she is as small as a child. She is wearing a blue hospital gown, covered with the thin white blanket from the nursing home. She is placed in a leather recliner on which a large bunch of party balloons has been tied. She holds my daughter. We gather around the two of them and pose for pictures. This is a farewell party as much as anything else, though I do not grasp this at the time. I still do not understand. And here is another thing I don’t yet understand: this will be the last time I see my grandmother outside of the nursing home on Washington. Outside of the lightless building that smells of urine, where the moaning had put me on edge. Outside of the shared room, with the three beds, where her days might or might not have been crossed out on a calendar that hung on the wall.
At this point, the latter wouldn’t have much mattered. In those final months of my grandmother’s life, so many things she had felt strongly about before had lost their importance and, although I never thought to ask her, I have to think that time, especially time, had become irrelevant. My grandmother no longer cared what day it was. But at one point in her life she would have cared. She would have no doubt cared a great deal.
There is the morning of my grandmother’s service, on the chartered boat in Marina Del Ray, when we scatter her ashes, when the fine particles of her fly up with the wind, and then settle themselves on the murky waves of the Pacific Ocean. It is an overcast morning in January, a Saturday. It is a short trip: we have flown in the day before, we leave the following morning. I am three months pregnant. I have on an unstylish pair of pants and no makeup. My daughter is tired. I wrap her in the pashmina I have borrowed from my step-mother, and she rests her head on my lap.
At some point, after we have been sailing for a while, the captain cuts the engine, and my father rises to say a few words. Mid-sentence, he loses his ability to speak. I do not recall having ever seen my father cry, but in this moment, I recognize that he might. I can’t bear to look at my father, so I look at my husband, who is looking at my father.
And then something happens, something both as trace and as definite as the salt that is present in the air. My father lifts his face, and he sees my husband, who is looking right at him. Here are two men, business men, men who spend the majority of their waking hours organizing, problem solving, handing out orders like rations, but right now, there is nothing either of them can do. A hard line has been drawn. No amount of moving around the pieces, of negotiating the terms, will ever change the outcome. It is something like a shared recognition of their helplessness that passes between the two of them, and the exchange is so incredibly tender that I cannot take it. My eyes fill, and I’m forced to look away once more.
Water sloshes up the sides of the boat. The California coastline, teeming with life, stretches along one side of us; on the other, an endless expanse of ocean and sky. There is the solid warmth of my daughter’s head on my lap, one half of her face exposed, pale and glistening like a crescent moon. I feel slight pressure in my pelvis, the stirring of a new life blooming inside of me. The captain restarts the engine. Sunlight breaks through the cloud layer, flecking the rocking waves with silver.