saying goodbye

I had a heartbreaking phone conversation with my mom tonight. I was at work, taking my break and talking on the phone to SK, when Fat Tony came to tell me my mom was on the phone. My mom never calls me, and she double-never calls me at work. In fact, I'm shocked she actually held onto my work number. Regardless, she called tonight and as soon as Fat Tony said it, I felt my whole body flush and I knew it had to do with my grandmother.

Mom's voice on the phone was thick with crying and I assumed my grandmother had died, but she hadn't yet. Probably tomorrow. She's been refusing food for awhile and today she started refusing liquids. I told mom about Isaac; that he wasn't able to eat for a week, then came the day that he wasn't able to drink, and the next day he died. I told her about the plastic tub and the sips of gatoraid and the quarts of liquid he threw up after. I told her his last words were "I'm so thirsty."

I never really talked to mom about my experience with Isaac at the end. She never asked. Tonight, she cried and cried and said how awful it would be to lose a child that way, to watch them while they were sick, to watch them throwing up their liquids, to watch them suffer. She didn't exactly say it would be awful to lose *me* that way, or my brother, she said "a child" but I knew she meant us and that was good enough. We both cried.

I'm sad about my grandmother but I'm more sad for my mom who is there, in the middle of such a painful thing. They finally told my grandmother today that she can go, it's ok, everything's taken care of. She's been "talking out of her head" lately, according to mom. She kept asking for a stone, and nobody knew what she meant. "A stone," she said. "To hold in my hand." My grandfather got her a pretty stone she had found on a trip they took across the country. He put it in her hand for her.

Mom thinks she meant a headstone. Yesterday she said "I can't die now, I need a block! We all need blocks! You need one and you and you." Mom thinks she means burial plots. Mom thinks she's been hanging on because she's worried about the arrangments. So mom and her sister made the arrangements a couple days ago. They bought my grandmother a fucking coffin from Costco. Can you believe they sell coffins at Cosco? And online, no less. Whatever. A box is a box.

So the hospice doctor came by today and told them it will be soon, and after that they told her all the arrangments were made and it was ok for her to go. I think it will be tomorrow. Meanwhile, mom wants me to come visit her in mid-March because John Edward the psychic medium will be in her town filming a show and she wants us to go on and see if my grandmother comes through to talk to her. "Or Isaac," mom said helpfully, as if that would convince me to come. Oh mom. I wish I could be there with you right now.