Meg

It was the summer of 1982 when everything changed. I remember sitting out on my granddaddy’s porch in my favorite tank top and cut-offs, sipping lemonade and watching the sun set over the distant horizon. My granddaddy would sit next to me in his wicker rocking chair, not talking much, just gazing into collage of colors in the sky. This is how every evening went, sitting on his white wrap-around porch which was faded from too many years of neglect. Momma said that when Gramma was still alive the porch always had a fresh coat of paint, just like the rest of the house. Now it was only a glimpse of how beautiful the house had been. The green shutters that outlined the big, clear glass windows were starting to fall off their hinges and the paint was rusting. The porch steps were completely destroyed so that you had to leap all the way up to the porch from 2 feet down. The inside of his house wasn’t much better.

The only things on Granddaddy’s property that didn’t show signs of their age were the sweet birch trees that grew all over the property. Granddad would always make sure they were watered and cared for properly, and sometimes he’d let me help him. I always wondered why he’d take so much care of the trees and not his house, but I had only asked him about it once. When I asked him, Granddaddy just looked over at me with his wise blue eyes and said, “Now Meg, these trees are part of the living folk, like you or me. We’re just helping them stay that way.”

It was that year when Granddaddy got diagnosed with lung cancer. He didn’t like going to the hospital much so they didn’t find it until he collapsed in the kitchen when he and Aunt Bee were having a talk one afternoon. Aunt Bee called 911 and they rushed him to the hospital where they discovered that he had a brain tumor. They immediately started treatment though the doctor told my momma there wasn’t much hope of his living, seeing as the treatment was so rigorous and he was so old. The doctor also said that if Granddaddy came home after his first round of treatments, he’d need somebody there to look after him. Momma and I talked about it a lot and decided that we’d move into his house from our own beat up apartment building. We were the only ones who could, after all. Uncle Carl was in law school up north, and Aunt Bee had 6 children to look after, whereas all Momma had was me. It wasn’t too different to actually live in Granddad’s house. After all, we spent most of our time there already.

The only strange thing was Granddad. A lot of the time he wasn’t at home and when he was there, all he did was sit in his bed watching the brand new TV my Momma bought him and sleeping. It scared me how different he seemed. His face looked older, more vacant, and he was a lot quieter. We never sat out on the porch and watched the sunset anymore. He would just sleep. Sometimes I’d sit outside his bedroom door and watch him, how much more frail he looked. And thin, he was way too thin. And when he would get sick and hurt a lot I would be hurting with him. I would never cry though. I needed to be strong for Momma since this was her weakest time.

A few months after the treatment begin Momma brought Granddaddy home as usual, but something was different. They were standing up a little taller and my momma’s face shone as she grinned and said, “Hey baby, guess what? Granddaddy’s in remission.”

That night we had a celebration. Remission meant that Granddaddy had won his battle with cancer, at least for now. We dressed up in our best things and went out and bought a pint of ice cream to share. We turned on the radio and danced around in our living singing at the top of our lungs until we collapsed in a heap on the floor because we were so tired. When the sun set all three of us went out to watch it. And in my 9 year old mind this was the most beautiful sunset I had ever seen. Even now I can picture it as it was on that on that evening. We sat side by side on the porch swing, my head in Momma’s lap and my hand clasped in Granddaddy’s. I never wanted this night to end; I wanted it to go on forever.

For the next 2 months everything seemed brighter and more upbeat. Momma and I cleaned Granddaddy’s house and even put a fresh coat of paint on the outside. All three of us would go to the park at least once a week and I would play on the playground while they would watch me. They’d clap when I did a particularly hard trick, hold me up when I couldn’t reach the monkey bars all the way, and comfort me when I fell down. We'd go everywhere and see everything around during the daytime, but we always made it back to watch sunset on the porch. Oftentimes I would fall asleep with my head in Momma's lap. Those days were the epitome of my life, nothing could be better.

It was one of those days when everything was chaos. Granddad, Momma, and I had gone to the park in the morning, then run to the grocers, and then back home to work around the yard for a while. Momma tried to make Granddad lay down inside while we puttered around the yard, but he wouldn't have it. He told us that if we were going to make him sit down and watch us work on his own yard, he might as well be dead already. So Momma gave in and let him work with us, though she wouldn't let him do anything she deemed 'too strenuous'.

We worked all afternoon and then went inside for some sandwiches. Granddaddy said he was just going to take a quick nap before supper because he was a little tired. We didn't think twice about it and kept on fixing our sandwiches. When we were done with the dinner preparations we checked on Granddad and saw that he was still sleeping, so instead of waking him up, we went ahead and ate our sandwiches.

Momma and I found quiet things to occupy us as the sun grew lower and lower in the horizon, but as the evening wore on and Granddaddy still didn't wake, we began to worry a little. As the sunset began to fade without us there to share it, Momma decided to wake Granddaddy up herself. She went into his room and gently shook him, but he didn't wake. She tried a little harder, but to no avail. Then she prodded and poked him until my arms hurt just thinking about it. As she was doing this her voice called out to me, calm, but forced like a kid being forced to come back down after jumping real high on a trampoline. "Hand me the phone baby girl," she said slowly.

Now when Momma gets that tone with me, I've learned to do whatever she asks as quickly and as quietly as possible. I grabbed the phone from the kitchen counter and handed it to her. She dialed a three digit number and quickly placed the phone by her ear. I stopped listening as soon as Momma started talking. Her voice had lost its calm tone and took on a more frantic, more weak one. That scared me just as much as her first tone. I didn't know what was happening to Granddad, or why he wouldn't wake up, but I knew it wasn't good.

Soon the sound of sirens filled the neighborhood as an ambulance pulled into our driveway. Some official looking men came into our house with a stretcher and took Granddaddy away. They asked Momma if she wanted to come with them but she said no, she would be along later with me. Then Momma started packing Granddaddy's stuff together and piling a lot of it in the car. We both got in and drove off into the night, following the distant sounds of the ambulance. Momma's hands were tense on the steering wheel, which meant she was concentrating real hard on her driving, so I didn't bother her with the thousands of questions I was dying to ask.

We rushed into the Wakefield Medical Center and straight up to the reception desk. The lady there directed us to the curtained space where Granddaddy was being held in the emergency room. He had doctors and other medical staff swarmed around him, poking needles into him and doing all sorts of scary stuff which brought me to tears. My Granddaddy looked so helpless lying there. We sat down by the curtain, out of the way so they wouldn't have to trip over us to help Granddad, but close enough so we could hear what they said. After what felt like hours one of the doctors came to us and told my momma that Granddaddy's cancer had come back and had spread all over his body. They were going in for emergency surgery, but they needed her consent first. Momma readily gave it, but not before she asked what the chance of recovery for this kind of procedure was.

"15% chance of making a full recovery, seeing as the cancer has spread, and looking at his age," the doctor said matter-of-factly, "We'll see you in a few hours and give you an update on how it's going."

The night following was the longest night of my life. Scenes of it flashed in and out like dreams. I remember us crying and hugging each other, scared for each other, and scared for Granddaddy. Then things kind of went to black until the doctor came out and told Momma that they had lost Granddaddy half way through the surgery, and even though they had tried for an hour to revive him, he was really gone. Momma bent over she was sobbing so hard, and then gripped me in a hug so tight I feared she would never let go. In my 9 year old mind I couldn't possibly fathom what death meant, because all the people I had ever lost before were gone before I could remember much about them. I believed that Granddaddy would reappear the next day, right as rain, and ready to go care for his trees, and watch the sunset with me. But Granddaddy didn't appear. Not the next day or the next.

The funeral was on Saturday. I put on my new little black dress and followed Momma to the church, where I had one last look at Granddaddy lying so still in his coffin, and it hit me then and there that I would never see his smiling face again. I broke down into tears and couldn't move from that spot until the pallbearers came to take him away. Momma escorted me to a nearby chair where I sat crying while the funeral was going on outside. She sat with me the whole time, helping me through my break down, as I had helped her through hers a few days before.

That night, and for many nights to come, as the sun went down, I wasn't out there to watch it. The trees in the yard stood forlorn and forgotten. The house went back to its previous state of disrepair, though not because of Momma. She went to work at two jobs, one at a gas station, the other and a grocery store. I, on the other hand, couldn't bear to do much aside from getting up in the morning, anything else seemed like I was betraying Granddaddy by doing it without him. I couldn't even move the TV remote from his bedside table because I was afraid that by moving it, I would lose the memory of seeing Granddaddy pick it up, and flip through the channels on a day when he was too tired or too sick to do much else. I didn't want to lose him, or lose my memory of him. I felt that by doing things he would've done without him, I would forget the memories we'd had together, doing those things.

I had gotten so out of schedule that I didn't even remember my own birthday until we got a letter in the mail announcing that school was going to start again in two weeks. My birthday was always on the day we received that letter, and Momma always told me that they used my birthday to remind them to send out the notice. I didn't think I could go back to school again and face all my friends, knowing that my life had completely changed since I saw them last. I tried not to dwell on the memories of Granddaddy walking me to school or hobbling along the street after me with my forgotten lunch box. School would never be the same.

Since it was my birthday, Momma came home from work that day with a small cake that said, 'Happy birthday Meg' on it along with 10 little candles. It was late in the evening as Momma blindfolded me and led me out on the porch as the crickets serenaded us with their song. She took the blindfold off my eyes only for me to behold the most beautiful sunset that I had ever seen. My eyes filled with tears as I thought of all the times Granddaddy and I had spent out here together.

"I can just see Granddaddy up in heaven, painting this sunset in the sky just for your birthday, baby girl. He was always the happiest out here with you," Momma said as she smiled down upon me. I realized right then that Granddaddy was still watching the sunset with me, except now he was up in heaven, where there was no pain and no sickness. And as far as forgetting him, watching the sun go down and the stars fill the night sky would rather be a reminder of all the memories we'd had together.

p.s. Happy Valentine's Day Grandpa! I miss you and love you and hope you're having a great time up in heaven :)