troy was here

It’s been about 6 years and I don’t
remember much except that I was
lucky she chose to die when I
was planning my holiday.  I guess
I’ve always been kinda lucky with
death.  One Uncle died while
I was returning from a motorcycle
trip so I was able to swing by for that.
Another gave me a much needed
mid-week break at work.  My Grandma
though, she laid in her hospital bed
breathing raspy, short filled breaths
that gave an odd smell matching
their odd sound.  It was a sound
you’d think would be easy to
fix, like an obvious gash or broken
bone, but they evidently couldn’t.
So she laid there feigning sleep
while we filled in the spaces between
her breaths with our own sounds
that too, needing fixing.  Together,
it was a terminal symphony.
When we reached the end of
that day’s round (played as a round
or course, as it often didn’t know when to
quit) I jumped on an intermission -
“No, I’ll stay with her.  You guys
go and I’ll just sit here for a
while and meet you at home.  I’ll
call if something happens.”
As they left I felt a weight
removed.  Now it was just me and
Grandma, like it used to be when
we’d sit there watching her stories
or when I bothered her in the
kitchen while she fixed beans
or peeled dutch potatoes.  She had
opened her eyes just briefly in
the 24 hours I’d been there, but
I knew she could hear.  I don’t
think she moved once either.
So I pulled my chair up a little
closer and, somewhat uneasily,
held her hand.  I’m not big on hand-
holding.  Part of that’s a guy thing but
a bigger part is that it’s just the way
I am.  She knows that too.  As I
sat there comfortably with her hand
and her raspy breathing and that
odd smell, I found an odd ease in
the rhythm of it all and soon dozed off.
The previous day’s drive had caught
up with me I guess, and I headed straight
into rom and awoke, seemingly,
as quickly as I had nodded off.  It
was surprising, that instant I woke,
and I sensed a strange absence.
My eyes fixed on the source
of that sound that had earlier
sent me off …and I waited for it.
And waited.  Math never came
easy to me especially as a kid (I blame
Mrs. Gafuik) so it took me a while to put
the two two’s together to figure out
that that raspy breathing had come
to a stop.  A dead stop.
After it sunk in I realized her hand
was still in mine.  It was dry, but I
wouldn’t say cold but more room
temperature.  And I didn’t think to
move it, which is weird because
most kids holding a dead hand would
want to move it even a little.  The
clock told me 40 minutes had past?!
I quickly got up and figured it best to tell
someone what happened so I went out
into the hall and started toward the person
at the desk mumbling something about
“…she stopped breathing.  I fell asleep
and didn’t know but she must of
stopped…” to which the pink-gowned
girl seemed relieved and said it was ok
(which I thought was weird as someone
just died ….but like I said I’m not good at
math) and she talked about how my
Grandpa is probably still awake which
got me thinking about calling him and Mom…
so I did.  And I didn’t go back in there
either.  I stayed in the hall
while everyone else went in,
and I just paced around the front
lobby reading and rereading stuff they
had on the walls and thinking about
how the funeral would be in a few
days and then I’d get home almost
to the day that I had planned on leaving.
And I’m thinking how convenient
her death was, and how perhaps
she waited for me like she did when I
was a kid getting distracted
doing my kid things, and how luck
probably had very little to do with it.