On May 17th, 2011, my grandmother died.
My mother called me multiple times in the hours before with updates on her condition. I don’t remember any of those messages, just that there were a lot of them and that I checked them right after she left them but didn’t call back. She sounded frantic, too frantic to be scared just that panic that overtakes everything else. I didn't want to be overtaken. I was at work. And my day was already 2,000 miles away and two hours ahead of hers.
Finally, she left the final message. All the panic had evaporated from her voice, just the cold clarity of voice that comes with the shock of devastation. She told me to call her. I knew my grandmother had to be dead, so I called my mother back.
She told me, “You need to call your brother and tell him.” I called Patrick, there was no answer. I didn’t leave a message. Then, I called my father. My father said to tell my mother that he was sorry, which is the only thing he has ever asked me to tell my mother since they’ve been divorced.
Three days later, as I was walking home from the “El”, Patrick called me. Dad had told him. Patrick said, “I’m sorry, Marlena.”.As if the death belonged to me. Like our grandmother was my husband.
I should have hit him back. And said, “I’m sorry for you too, Patrick.” But instead I hung up.
Patrick was born in August in Sacramento and my mother’s room wasn’t air conditioned well. When my grandmother arrived, the first thing she did was balance my dark and squirming brother on her arm, and with just her forefinger and her thumb she peeled each sock off. But somehow the death belonged to me.
