I was 11. My Grandma was 76. When my parents found out, they were hesitant to tell me. As if I wouldn’t find out eventually. As if. I would have liked it if they hadn’t told me, I wish they hadn’t told. Sometimes when I act like something isn’t real it goes away. When I broke the lamp I just pretended it didn’t happen, and magically all the broken pieces were gone the next day. I wish I could do the same with brain cancer, I really did. But it doesn’t.
“Mommy, what does dying mean?” I asked, in a child-like voice. I knew what it meant. In all the movies someone dies, but that’s fake. I never knew anyone who had died, I didn’t know what it felt like. After seeing the heartbreak in The Lion King, however, I wasn’t too sure I liked the idea.
“It means you go to a better place,” she said, and that was that.
“Dude, Grandma is going to die,” my brother said without removing his eyes from his video game.
I didn’t know what to say except, “yeah.” I mean what else could I say? This was all foreign to me. I just said, “yeah,” and lost myself in the big screen once again. I had so many questions, but I didn’t want to seem childish, so I kept quiet. After a few silent minutes of wondering, I simply asked, “What is cancer?” Again, without removing his gaze from the screen, said, “Cancer is the most deadliest, dangerous disease someone could ever have.” He said it as if he was describing a rare trading card.
My mom is a hopeful woman. Even in the dark, she can see light. Even when there is no light she sees light. I think it’s crazy, but Dad tells me there is a beauty to it. “John, you have nothing to worry about” she would say.
Yeah right, Ben told me, she’s gonna die.
My Grandma was like Super Glue. She held all the mismatching family members together like she was constructing a deranged toy. She knew me for me and Will for Will. She was the gatekeeper to all of our hearts, but now? Now, I questioned if we were going to lose that important key forever.
“You can have whatever you want,” my Grandma would always say. I didn’t even care that she would buy me whatever I wanted; I enjoyed the fact that she loved me enough to buy me anything just to see me happy.
She knew exactly what kind of food I would want to eat after a long car ride to her house. Macaroni and cheese and mandel bread. It was better than the best; it was the bestest. She always had the most fun stuff to play with too, the big clown glasses or the bear slippers were my favorite. Slowly however, those things I cherished the most during my visits started to change, to dreary rainy days spent in the hospital. One day I answered the phone, and on the other end was my Grandpa. “Hey, John,” he faltered. “Is your mother home?” I never saw those bear slippers again.