Carol’s body lays almost motionless, her mouth agape, tubes jetting uncomfortably out her nose. At eight years old, my nana looks to me like something from Power Rangers. I watch from the corner of the grayed hospital room as if gazing through a screened window—fully present and somehow not at all. Light filters through flitting curtains as I watch my mother weep next to Nana’s body. Her weak breaths come slow and difficult like an air mattress being blown up by a child. My mom sings her a song about Jesus and tells her she’s free to go. Says it’s okay if she leaves through quiet sobs and that she will make it by just fine. Carol Sullivan clutches her rosary.
The memory stares at me plain and cold. I wasn’t close with my nana. She lived in Massachusetts, not far from my Uncle Peter, and all I knew of her then was that of Christmas and birthday cards with sweet words and a twenty-dollar bill. I spent the twenty on donuts and soda from the corner store and left her words in the recycling bin. She, being my only living grandparent, existed two-dimensionally. Time would pass, Nana would die, and a longing for something more would tentatively rear its head as I got older, but I couldn’t explain why.
Her memory was shot, and I learned later she had bipolar disorder. She moved to Colorado Springs as things got worse, and they put her in a home for assisted living twenty minutes from our house. The first time I met her, her hands shook miserably as she leaned forward to kiss my forehead. Her wrinkled, sallow cheeks falling off her face next to puckered lips covered in bright pink lipstick struck me with horror. I hardly knew this old woman, but she was supposed to be important to me somehow.
Fifteen years later, I work at the Apple Store selling tech devices to a lot of old people. Today, Janet’s buying a new sixteen-inch MacBook Pro and an iPad. She uses her old MacBook Pro for InDesign and Photoshop. This lady is teaching math, creating spreads for the local math journal for kids, and is at least seventy years old. What’s the iPad for? Bingo.
The bank declines her card in case of fraud, and I wait as she calls them to sort things out. She tells me afterward how she lacks patience, but from my experience, she’s quite the saint. When I say this, she reaches her hand softly up to my shoulder and looks at me squarely as if to tell me to listen carefully, “In every interaction there’s someone with power and someone without. If you are the latter, your two most important virtues are patience and persistence.”
For a second, I imagine what it would’ve been like had Nana had the brainpower to give me advice like this. If she had been more to me back then than just a stale old lady that seemed to make my mom’s life more difficult. I thank Janet for the advice and tell her I’ll write it down, and I mean it. We finish setting up her iPad, and she shows me the Bingo app.
All I remember of Mom in the years that Nana lived nearby was a sort of constant stress and agitation. After school, she’d pick me up and we’d head to Nana’s care facility to drive her from appointments to the pharmacy and back. My mother’s a strong woman who expresses her opinions and emotions honestly, but a tenseness shrouds these memories. We’d sit in silence—me in the back seat, Nana in passenger. Mom would park the car at the pharmacy, help Nana out, and I’d trail behind while Nana hobbled along next to Mom. On the way back, Nana would make comments on Mom’s driving or her lack of care for her own dying mother. Mom would say something short—something about trying to raise four boys and making ends meet, and Nana would bite back with a cold expression and silence. To me? She’d kiss my forehead and say I looked taller. I never grew an inch in the years I knew her. She remained flat and lifeless, and I guess I never imagined her more than that—never pictured any old person more than a senile, walking corpse.
Charles wants to buy the new Apple Watch Ultra and answers everything with a firm “Okay” and deadpan glare. He tells me how wild it is that this watch can go ten meters underwater, and I tell him it can actually go one hundred. His brows loosen from their natural furrowed state, and he gasps. Charles used to dive nearly every day. He says how much he wishes he had this watch back then. I tell him I went scuba diving when I was twelve in Cozumel, and he gives me a warm smile. His memories swim shakily between our eyes. Something forlorn lays to rest there.
I help him try on the watch holding his thick, calloused hands in mine as they shake. We both decide he should get the Trail Loop band that uses Velcro even though it’s not the one used for diving. It’s easier to put on, and I learn that that’s okay because Charles hasn’t dived in decades. It makes me sad, but he seems to have made his peace. I walk him to the Setup Table slowly as we talk about his days underwater. His medical socks hike up above his knees, probably to ease some pain in the swollen muscles that encase his bones from his toes to his hips. He moves steadily and leans most of his weight on the walker.
I picture Charles in his prime. I imagine those legs like mine with youth in them. He’s a large man, and I imagine the freedom he felt watching sharks and eels go about their business, letting him observe from up close. I see a young man like me with questions and a dream underwater. We open the watch, and Louie at the Setup Table makes Charles laugh. It’s a deep laugh, and he almost chokes on it. I’m laughing too, and I’m thankful that Louie has this way with people. I imagine that although most everything has changed for Charles, that laugh hasn’t changed much. It’s only gotten richer and deeper.
In fourth grade, Alena’s abuela came to our class with conchas and stories from her past. It was Día de Muertos, and she talked of how the holiday was a celebration of life. We looked at their old family photos and were encouraged to bring photos of our own deceased loved ones. Classmates brought pictures of dogs, cats, parents, and grandparents—I didn’t bring anything. Nana had been dead a few years, but the thought hadn’t crossed my mind.
Years later, when Alena’s abuela died, she missed school for a month, and I remember wondering why I hadn’t done the same when Nana passed. I made jokes about growing up without grandparents, but the truth was that I had Nana for those short years—I just didn’t know her very well. Maybe the jokes were a plea for help. Some ache for something more.
Gary’s blind in one eye, leans on his walking cane, and relies on two hearing aids. He leans in when I talk with a hand on my shoulder and laughs a deep belly laugh when I make stupid jokes. He needs a new iPad. He’s a YouTube addict, and his last iPad’s charger is stuck. I think it’s probably fixable, but I help Gary anyway because he insists. I talk slow and teach him all about his new device. He loves it. There’s not much to it—it has the same five apps his last one had, but he’s happy. He’s more than happy. He’s a retired car mechanic, and he keeps telling me how dumb he is for not being able to understand these devices. I tell him he can take apart my car engine, and I don’t even know how to change my oil. He laughs and gives me another pat on the back. Gary’s friend Ed waits outside on the outdoor couches. I ask more about Gary’s life, and he blossoms. His son works at the hospital as a surgeon, and his daughter lives abroad with her husband working in fine arts. But then Gary talks of Gene, his love he calls her.
Gene passed four years ago. Gary’s eighty-four, but when he talks of his high school sweetheart, I see sophomore Gary asking Gene ten leagues out of his own out on a date. I watch his eyes brighten like a child. I’m selling an iPad to an eighty-four-year-old man while he tells me of his deceased wife he’s known since high school. She moved in four houses down from him his freshman year, and they fell in love walking to school and riding the bus together. He tells me how they used to listen to Peter, Paul, and Mary and talk about cars.
“You don’t hear that anymore,” He says, eyes shining.
“No, you really don’t,” I say.
For a second, I imagine Gary and Gene as my grandparents. The thought comes uninvited, and leaves just as fast, and I feel a bit embarrassed. Gene’s dead. Gary finds his way with friends like Ed and kids he loves with a fire, but I know deep down he’s still walking to school with his love, and I don’t want to sell an iPad anymore. I just want to meet Gene.
I wish I could try again with Nana. I wish I could meet her with a hug and head full of questions. I want to ask her what Grandpa was like and if they ever danced to jazz in the kitchen. Mom never talks about Nana, and I never ask. Like me, she left home as soon as she could, and I get the impression things were never very intimate between the two. In the years she lived nearby, I only ever thought of her as some dying thing, and only now do I feel the pain of what I can’t have back.
Everyone I knew had grandparents. They visited them for the holidays and spent the weekend in the guest room when their parents went out of town. They’d talk of late nights and the sugary cereal their parents never let them have. Sages with stories, jokes, and fables piled high. Sages with knees to bounce on and belly laughs to give. They’d come back from a weekend trip with eyes beaming, and I only now do I feel like I was robbed. That I robbed myself.
I wish I could turn time back and ask Nana what the East Coast winters felt like piled under mountains of snow. I wish I could spend the winter with her there. I’d meet those shaking hands and puckered lips with a smile.
Mary’s sweater depicts three robins stringing together a wreath. It’s Christmas time, and she explains to me the sweater’s not a choice but a necessity, similar to the red shirts we wear at work during the holidays. Our interaction is quick and seamless—she came to return the iMac she bought because she had gotten too much storage. She explains she only needs enough to house all the photos of her grandkids. There’s a lot of photos, but she doesn’t need a whole terabyte. Mary’s easy to talk to, and her presence breaks the fact I have no grandparents out of me. It’s something I’m open about, but I realize I had never told a grandparent this. My muscles tense, and I look down in embarrassment.
“You know, you could always adopt a grandparent.”
I look up at Mary, confused. Her blue eyes sit behind her glasses plainly.
“Of course—not me, I’ll be leaving soon!” She laughs with her hand on my shoulder.
Mary leaves, and when I go home for the day, I take the wrong exit to my street two times and find myself parked in an alley confused and thinking about Mary. What if I did adopt a grandparent? Wouldn’t they all be leaving soon?
A few weeks later, I’m back home for the holidays meeting a few high school friends for breakfast. I hadn’t seen some of them in four-and-a-half years, and we laugh at how wild it was that we’ve stayed in touch this long. We’d say it was the fact our graduating class was one hundred twenty-eight people, but deep down we know it’s because Colby took his life our sophomore year and left our friend group a huddled, confused group of stoners—doomed to each other’s company every Christmas for a hodgepodge of coffee and conversation at the local Waffle House. The conversation juggles from school to firefighting to Jenson’s married life.
“Bryant, how’s Gramps?” I ask.
“He died, dude.” Bryant grew up in his grandpa’s house. The closest I’d had to a present grandparent was Gramps, and my first taste of alcohol was the stolen vodka from his liquor cabinet.
“Shit—I’m so sorry, Bry. I totally forgot.”
“Don’t worry about it, man—really you’re okay. Actually, the memorial service is Wednesday. You all should come. I’ll be playing a piece for him.”
I sat twenty pews back with my mom and a few friends at Gramps’s memorial service. They held the gathering in a large old church with dark oak walls that rose high to stained glass windows. I watched the snow fall through the red-tinted glass while we sang hymns and listened to the old pastor speak. Bryant’s piano piece broke us all. The family shared memories and stories, and I sat enamored at how a man could be spoken of so fondly by his grandchildren. Bryant’s younger brother Travis shared how Gramps never missed one basketball game. Not one. He drove them to school every morning and let them listen to “that rap music” in the car even though he hated it. Travis called him his best friend.
In the foyer after the service, I grabbed a few cookies and hugged old people I didn’t know the names of. I found Bryant and a few high school buddies, and we laughed about the sleepovers in Gramps’s basement with the stolen liquor. How he might’ve known but never said a thing.
“I don’t know. It’s dumb to say—the dude was an old man, but I just wish there was more time I guess,” Bryant said. The words made my stomach turn, and I thought of all the time I’ve let slip without thinking twice. I thought of Mary’s words from the Apple Store. I thought about adopting a grandparent and realized that maybe I already had. That Gramps had been something of a grandparent to me. But like Nana, he was gone before I knew what it meant to have him.
After the holidays, I’m back at the Apple Store. Joni sat at the corner of the Setup Table with her new MacBook in front of her. A small woman from El Salvador with deep puffy eyes set behind large trapezoid glasses. She sat there for some time, hands folded while I worked with other customers. Some are blessed with the patience of angels; Joni blessed the angels with hers. I approached and introduced myself and asked if I could be of any assistance before noticing she hadn’t even opened her new computer. She nodded and held out her hand to shake mine. Her voice was soft, and I had to lean in to hear her through her mask. We opened her computer, and the first setup page appeared.
“Let’s start by entering your name here, okay?”
“How do I do that?” She asked quietly.
Her innocence and honesty broke something in me—the willingness to revert to the humility of being taught like a child. She didn’t feel the need to explain herself, but she did want help.
“So you’re gonna move the little pointer over to the box here and click. Then we’ll type in your name, okay?” Her small hands that could probably teach me knitting or dicing peppers shook.
“So the password will need to be eight characters and have an uppercase, a lower case, a number, and a special character like an exclamation mark or something. You’ll want to pick something you can remember, like the name of a pet.”
Joni’s hands moved to her notepad, her sunken eyes behind those large trapezoids thinking. They darted back down as she began writing. I looked to see the characters written—Donito78!—
“Donito! I like that, who’s that?”
“That’s my son.”
“Ah, I see. What does your son do?”
“He’s dead.”
“Oh. I’m so sorry to hear that, Joni.” The words left my tongue stuck to the roof of my mouth. I meet what feels like a million people a day at my job, but Joni was the first real one. I tried to hold myself together and think of questions to fill the silence.
“Do you have any other kids?”
“No. He was my only son. He died of heart cancer. My only son.” She recited the words as if it were a solemn song. As if she need not apologize for the pain it’d caused her because she had held it on her own and could bear it well. I could tell in her eyes she’d grown used to the heartache.
“They all leave, you know. They all start to die. Your friends. Your loved ones.”
I wasn’t sure why she was doing this, but I didn’t stop her. I thought of Gramps and Bryant. I thought of Nana and my mother. I held back tears as Joni told me how the world really worked.
“I have one friend left. She lives in El Salvador, and I’d like to send an email to her. Would you be able to help me with that?” Her eyes turned to me, catching me off guard.
“Yes—yes of course. Let’s do that, Joni. Let’s send your friend an email.”
I never asked Joni about her husband. I never asked her about her grandkids or other extended family. Maybe it’s because I was too scared to ask. The way she spoke of death shriveled my insides.
I remembered Joni’s email address. We had to set up her Apple ID two times because she gave me an email that didn’t exist the first time around, so the address stuck with me. Every once in a while, I write out an email to her. I type out the message asking her if she’d be my grandmother before deleting it and wondering what the hell I’m doing. It’s a lot to ask. She’s lost so much, and it feels like I’m crossing some weird boundary.
I think of Joni more often than I’d like to admit. I think of her friend in El Salvador, and I hope that she’s still alive. I hope that Joni’s still alive and that she had a good birthday. January 29 she turned seventy-three years old. I think of the old folks I’ve met at work, and I think of the Apple Store, and I wonder which one will die first. I realize most likely not the latter. It’s eerie. Something devoid of any actual breath or life will live longer than all of us. I want to tighten my grip and never let go.
My sneakers splashed off the sodden pavement as we walked to the car from Nana’s death bed. I looked up to my uncle Paul, my mother’s oldest brother. He stood three feet above me, his eyes falling into high cheekbones seemingly unaware that I walked beside him. The first day I met him on the day of his mother’s death—also the last day I’ve seen him since. He walked beside me with eyes down and thoughts far off as I stepped beside him with a G.I. Joe clutched in my hand.
I always thought I didn’t care to have grandparents because I never knew anything else. I made jokes about my grandparents being dead, but I didn’t know why. Was it because I wanted someone to show me what it was like to die? What it was like to be that close to the end? I get a taste of what it’s like to meet a few grandparents daily at my job, but those moments of goodbye never taste like breath leaving decaying lungs. They may be grandparents, but they aren’t mine. My nana’s still dead.
From: Josiah——@gmail.com
To: Joni——@gmail.com
Date: Feb 4, 2023, 7:05 AM
Subject: Happy birthday and other things
Dear Joni,
I hope you are well. Happy late birthday! You turned 73 this last week! That is a big accomplishment. I hope I get to do something as great as that in my lifetime. I never got to tell you, but I never grew up with any grandparents, and I wanted to ask you a rather odd question. I live in San Diego as I know you do as well. If it appeals to you at all, and if it would be no trouble, I’d love to be something of a grandson to you. I’d love to “adopt you as a grandparent.” If that is too uncomfortable, you don’t have to think of it that way. I really enjoyed your company, and I’d love to simply spend time with you whenever you like or when you are free. Let me know what you think. Or if you’d like to ignore this too, that is alright with me.
God bless,
Josiah
***
Illustrations by Naila Conita
