Granny,

I'm sorry that you're hurting. Laying there in that awful room with all those tubes and cuts and bruises. They won't let you have anything to drink, and I'm sorry that you're thirsty. They give you pain medicine, but it doesn't make it go away. I wish that bed was big enough for me to lay beside you and touch your fluffy gray hair and cry with you and tell you how much I love you over and over. I wish I could make your pain disappear. I wish Cancer were a person I could beat the shit out of. You weren't ready for this. Didn't know how much it would hurt, or how much it will continue to hurt in the coming months.

But you have the grace and strength to smile at me when you open your eyes, and to call me "pretty girl" like you always do. In the face of disease you can still crack a good joke. I love that about you.

Thank you for loving me and taking care of me when I was little. For making me cheese and cracker snacks and feeding me cold hot dogs straight out of the package, letting me watch General Hospital, and picking me up from school in your cool brown Cadillac. Thank you for teaching me the ways and wonders of frugality. For wearing mismatched clothes and not caring what people think. For that blue banana clip you got me from that yard sale when I was in college, and for giving me those "stickers" (return address labels with your address on them). For being the one I got some of my weirdness from. For giving everything that you have.

I love you most.


Mandie