The Last Call

The Last Call

“I love you. I miss you. I love you. I miss you.”

The last words my grandmother would ever communicate to me, though I was hopeful. Having 759 miles between family and myself, I have grown accustomed to phone calls being a main means of communication. I knew that Grammy was sick, but I couldn’t touch her face, I couldn’t have a face to face conversation with her, I couldn’t see the extent of water retention all throughout her body for my own two eyes. I couldn’t see the magnitude of just how close her travel to Heaven was. Until I got that call. Merriam-Webster dictionary defines anguish as “extreme pain, distress, or anxiety.” I underestimated the true meaning of anguish until I heard the words “She’s gone Court.”

Three weeks prior, I got a call from my mother. She told me, with regret in her voice, that my family was calling the priest in to read my grandmother her last rites. The doctors said this was it. I tried to prepare myself for the calls that would follow in the hours ahead. But they never came. Instead, I waited. And waited. Days went by. Still hanging on. And then, I got the call. Not the one I had been preparing for, but the call that told me a miracle happened and she was awake. The doctors had seen nothing like it, but I was grateful. My family and I decided that I would fly up on January 17 to spend time with her, since things still didn’t look promising. I would spend the weekend with my family, making my last memories with my Grammy. How do you spend time with someone knowing that it is the last time you will see them before they go to be with God? Those were critical moments that would shape my mourning. She would have a freshly placed tracheotomy tube, which was her least wanted thing in life, but I would be able to hold her hand. Kiss her. Tell her in person that I loved her to the moon and back, her signature saying to her grandchildren. Those moments never came.

On January 9, 2015, my life changed. Sitting on my porch...