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The house is eerily quiet when I get here. Maybe because I’m used to seeing Josh and Tommy outside, hearing their laughter mixed with Grams’s, or maybe because Grams isn’t in the kitchen or on the couch reading a book. Maybe it’s because I feel like an outsider and it feels strange that I just used a key to let myself in. I carry my luggage up to the guest room, glancing quickly inside Grams’s old, now empty, bedroom, and then into my old, now Sadie’s, room. I drop my bags just inside the room and decide it’s best to wait for Sadie and my grandmother outside. Being in the house brings out the fear, brings out the uncertainty. I start down the stairs and that’s when I hear the front door open and my grandmother’s voice. “I know, Joshua,” she says, clearly on the phone. “She should be here very soon. Oh, I’m so excited to see her. Did you lovebirds have a good time together?” … “That’s great! Is she just as beautiful as ever?”
I make it known by the loudness of my steps that I’m here and that I’m waiting. I think she sees me before I see her because I’m greeted with a squeal, followed by a whimper as she covers her mouth. Her eyes are already filled with tears, just like mine. Slowly, she stands up from her wheelchair and moves toward me. “I have to go, Joshua. My Becca’s home.”
Journal
It’s amazing—that one simple word can mean so much.
MY.
In most cases, my in front of your own name may seem wrong, like you’re nothing but a mere possession.
But it my case, it’s the opposite.
It means I belong, I’m loved, and I’m wanted.
And when you spend the first eighteen years of your life alone and discarded, searching for someone to claim you as theirs, my means everything.
My is the air in my lungs.
The light battling my darkness.
The hero fighting my villains.
~ ~
Grams feels so thin, so weak, so frail beneath my touch. I’m almost too scared to hug her back. Josh had sent me updates, along with pictures, but none of them could’ve prepared me for the woman standing in front of me. We only spend five minutes together, her asking me questions and me typing out answers, before it becomes clear she’s struggling to stay awake. Sadie notices too, and tells her it’s time for bed and that the walk they’d been on when I got here would’ve tired her out.
Grams doesn’t fight her, only nods and points to the bathroom. Sadie helps her walk there, and I watch, helpless and confused when I see Sadie go in with her. Maybe Josh was holding out on me, not wanting to give me the truth to spare me the pain of how bad things truly are with her. My mind switches from This is the new normal to Maybe she’s just having a bad day over and over in the few minutes it takes for them to finish their business in that tiny room.
Sadie gets her settled in her bed, and only now do I realize that it’s not her bed, not the bed that was here the last time I was, and not the bed I found myself crawling into when the pain, the suffering, the longing became too much. Now, it’s the same type they had in her hospital room, the same type I’ve spent countless nights in after feeling the wrath of my mother post “episode.”
I hold Grams’s hand until she falls asleep, which doesn’t take long. Then, as morbid as it sounds, I grab my camera from upstairs and take pictures of Grams in her peaceful state. There’s so much a lens catches that the eye doesn’t, and I plan on spending the entire night searching for those things. I want to study the expression on her face, the wrinkles that trace the outline of her lips. I want to compare the two of us and find similarities. It’s clear my eyes came from my dad, which means that he most likely got them from his. Grams’s eyes are a dark brown. Almost black. It should be impossible that so much light, so much hope, can come from such darkness.
When I’m done, I take my camera back upstairs, but before I look at the images, I send a text to Josh.
Becca: How come you didn’t tell me how bad things were with Grams?
Josh: Because they’re not…?
Becca: She’s in a hospital bed, Josh. She needs help going to the bathroom. You never mentioned those things.
Josh: I guess I just didn’t see it as such a big deal because they were progressive. It’s not like it happened overnight. I’m sorry. I should’ve told you. She was really excited to see you. Did she recognize you?
Becca: Yeah.
Josh: So that’s a good thing, right?
Becca: I guess, but I feel like I should be doing more. You’re taking on so much of this and it isn’t fair to you. I want to be here with her. I think I’m going to drop out and move in.
