It's over.
She passed away at 1:50-something this afternoon. My dad called me 40 miles from Memphis carrying a load of all that was in the apartment they kept in Little Rock while they were out there for treatments. When he got home, he called back to take me up on the offer I made earlier to help him around the house. I'm like him in that you know we really need the help if we bring ourselves to ask for it. I made arrangements right away to travel to Huntsville tomorrow.
For a moment when I hung up the phone, time stood still. In the same moment, I saw Stephen Elliott's name appear in my notification bar. I didn't even bother to read his Daily Rumpus before I replied to him to say it was a comfort to see this routine, ordinary email come at exactly the right moment to show me that while I stood frozen with grief, the world still turned and life, time, and the universe all kept going without me for a moment.
I also told him it felt like a great wave was crashing over me. Like I could finally exhale a breath I had been holding for nearly a week. I shed a few tears, and then went on half-heartedly through the rest of my day.
I broke the news to Jonah just before bed. He pretended to cry and I held him. But then he pulled away from me and said, "wait, I don't cry when people die. I cry when you're angry at me." I laughed and said that was a different reason to cry. That there are lots of reasons to feel sad and lots of reasons to cry. Losing your grandmother is certainly one of them and I made sure to tell him it was okay to feel sad and okay to cry if that's what he felt. Later, he asked me if we would have a memorial service for her. He still remembers Carson's last summer. He asked if maybe we could bring his cousins and they could play. I said they'd probably all be there, since she was their grandma, too. There's something so endearing about a kid being excited to see his cousins under the circumstances. It's as if death can't shatter his optimism. Really I know it's that he just doesn't understand the abstract scope of it.
She fought with all she had until there was nothing left to fight with. In the end, her kidneys and liver failed and her lungs were so damaged that even if she had survived this episode, they couldn't have treated her for myeloma any longer and she would have been gone soon anyway.
She didn't raise me, perhaps, but she loved me like a daughter and I loved her like a mother. I will never be able to thank her enough for the happiness she brought my father when he thought he'd spend the rest of his days in grief-stricken loneliness. He found love not once, but twice in his lifetime. And for all the words said by each of us about how unfair it seems to suffer this loss twice, there is the unwavering fact that we're so incredibly lucky to have gotten the chance.
Be at peace, Alicia. I love you so very much. Thank you for the light you imparted into each of our lives.
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