Sponsor me in the 2005 MS Walk! Why? Read here.
Since Buffy was a rerun tonight, Chris and I escaped the city on a Newbury Comics run. We stopped for dinner at Bertucci's and then headed to Newbury, where Chris bought two DVD's, Blade Runner and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, and a used Louis Prima CD, and I bought six (yes, that's SIX) new CD's, a used copy of Michael Penn's Free For All, Aimee Mann's I'm With Stupid, 'Til Tuesday's Coming Up Close: A Retrospective, Dido's No Angel, Poe's Haunted and Guns N' Roses' Appetite for Destruction. An odd mix, I know, but that's the mood I was in tonight. As I'm typing this, the 'Til Tuesday disc is playing in the iMac. Could I mention, by the way, that this computer has amazing sound?! I'm impressed!
So anyway, Chris and I had a good time out together tonight. I came through the door with my new CD's in a really good mood.
Then I saw the light blinking on the answering machine. Chris reported out from the caller ID box, "Your mom called."
I pressed play. "Hi Jennifer, just thought you might want to know that Nana was admitted to the hospital today after her radiation treatment. She was weak and disoriented, and they think she was really dehydrated. That's pretty much all I know right now. Talk to you later."
Funny how the new CD glow just disappeared.
I called her back, and she basically just repeated what she'd told the machine. Nana's doctors spent the day pumping her full of fluid so that tomorrow they can run a ridiculous number of tests on her and come back with the same diagnosis she's had all along. She has cancer. The chemo didn't work, and the radiation isn't working. She's actively dying, and there's nothing anyone can seem to do about it.
This just isn't fair.
My grandmother doesn't deserve this.
When I was a little kid, and I'd go to spend the whole summer with her and Papa, I thought they were invincible. Up until recently, nothing ever changed that belief.
One summer morning when I was about 8 or 9, we woke up to find a huge spider setting up house in the corner of the kitchen window in the camp. Most people I know would have shooed her outside at most, if not just squashed her outright. Nana dubbed her Charlotte and let her stay for several weeks. We watched her trap and eat. I learned all sorts of things about arachnid life, sitting in the kitchen with my grandmother those weeks, more than I ever learned in a science class. How many kids can say that?
I can't fathom that she won't be here to do the same for my children. Oceans of regret wash up at my feet.
It's not time yet to have to think about life without her. It just can't be.
It's not fair.
---------------------------------------------
Something to say about this entry?
Add your comments here (0 people have spoken already)
< Much ado about lunchtime, and Jenistar bribes her readers | Just take your pants off... >
