MY GRANDMOTHER DIDN’T ACT OLD until my grandfather died. She claimed he would recover, even as his final breath rattled in his throat. The adventure left her eyes after that. She didn’t plan any more trips to Japan or Africa. She didn’t bring back any more owl souvenirs.
She was smaller then than she had been in my youth. She shuffled from room to room where once her stride was long and urgent. Her hands shook as she reached her arms around me for a hug. Even as a grown man, I was reminded of my childhood-self thinking, she smells old. Only now she looked old and talked old too.
I’d moved out by this point. Bought a flat close to the city centre, where I worked. I visited her when I could—and in truth, I saw her more than either of my parents. But maybe it wasn’t enough.
Her house needed dusting. The lawn needed trimming. The garden needed to be re-sown. My Grandmother, never one to sit idle, attempted to do these things, but quickly grew fatigued before the task could be completed. When I came to visit her, I arrived in a world half-finished: a clean countertop beside a sink filled with dishes, a stripe of shaven lawn amidst a jungle of green, a single row of bean sprouts while weeds took over the rest.
I would drive out to see her weekly. Maybe biweekly. My life had become busier.
My Grandmother didn’t like it when I did her chores for her—insisted that she’d “get to them.” She never did. Instead, she told me stories about her childhood, while I sipped tea beside on her on the chipped blue patio furniture and nodded along.
She fell asleep before I left, more often than not. I carried her indoors and lay a blanket across her stomach so she wouldn’t catch a cold.
I didn’t mind her snoring anymore. I didn’t mind her old person smell.
I sat beside her while she slept and cradled her head and wondered about how I might have rewritten my youth, gotten to know her better, given half a chance. Only after she fell asleep did I let myself cry over the chunks of missing hair and her yellowed skin.