I am staring down at my grandmother’s sunken face.

 

She wears her FitBit on her wrist, the same amethyst-filled rings she always wore, and her hair is spiked like usual. Only today, the tips of her hair are purple.

“Do you like it?” my mother asks between sniffles. I nod my head.

“She always wanted purple hair,” I say as I gently touch the purple spikes. I look back at my mother. Her bottom lip is quivering.

I leave her standing by herself at her mother’s casket and join my brothers by a television screen. A slideshow of us—my grandmother’s grandchildren—plays with soft music. Photos of her holding me as a baby come onto the screen, and I find myself walking away once again. She took care of you when you were a baby, because I had to stay in the hospital with Noah. You got to go home to your grandmother first.

I think of all the stories my mother has told me in the past few days: stories of when my twin brother and I were born, and how my grandmother was the one to take care of me. She never put you down, because if she did, you would start crying. She’d sit in that rocking chair for hours with you. Call you her baby; her favorite.

The day my mother told me this was the day that my grandmother could no longer hold her head up on her own. Bedridden in the living room, a remote-controlled hospice bed was the only way we could get her to sit up. The rocking chair sat in the same corner as always, unmoved. “Just let her be,” my uncle said to my mother. She was holding the remote control in her hand and the bed was slowly raising my grandmother’s head. We could hear her groans, but her mouth didn’t move. It remained in a half-opened gape.

“She doesn’t like it. She’s uncomfortable,” my uncle continued.

My mother, who wanted to sit her up to try to get her to eat, looked defeated.

It’s no use. I could hear it in my uncle’s tone of voice, see it in my mother’s face as tears rolled down her cheeks. There will be no miracle.

*

 

I backed into my mother’s car. My grandmother was dying and Mom was giving her a sponge bath when it happened.

I was in a rush to leave the farmhouse I had found myself crying in far too often. My brother had a basketball game; it was my excuse to get out of the living room that had turned into my grandmother’s terminal abode. I was in a rush.

I wasn’t thinking.

I didn’t look in the rearview mirror.

When I heard the crash, I pictured everything that could have happened. Everything besides what I had actually done.

A car came into the driveway and hit me. The pole in the yard was closer than I thought. I didn’t hit anything. The sound came from something else.

All of these thoughts rushed through my head in a matter of seconds. I looked in the rearview mirror.

Behind me sat my mother’s silver Subaru Legacy.

How could I have forgotten that she parked behind me? She parked in front of me last night. I just wasn’t thinking. My mind was stuck in yesterday.

I could feel the tears stinging my eyes as I made the walk back to my grandmother’s porch. My uncle was in the kitchen when I stepped back into the house.

“Did you forget something?” he asked. Then he saw my tears.

“Could you get Mom for me?” I asked. I found it hard to speak. My breaths sounded like hiccups, or gasps for air.

He left to grab my mother. She returned with him.

“What happened? Did you hit my car?” She seemed to already know.

“I’m sorry,” I replied. “I just wasn’t thinking straight. I thought you were parked somewhere else. I’m sorry.”

She tugged on her boots. “Go sit with Gaga,” she told me, then walked out the door.

I went to the living room alone. I didn’t notice until I had reached my grandmother that I had kept my shoes on—something I never would have done months ago. She is still here. This is still her house. You should take your shoes off.

She didn’t seem to notice my shoes. She was sitting in front of the television on a portable toilet with her yellow pajama pants pulled down to the floor. Her hands were folded in her lap to cover herself. A bucket of steamy soapy water sat on the floor next to her.

This was only days before she could no longer hold herself up. “Come here, hon,” she said. “Give me a hug.”

I gently wrapped my arms around her from the side. Her hair, which was usually spiked and crunchy to the touch, was soft and yielding against my cheek.

“I don’t want to be like this, Riah. I hate this.”

Her confiding in me was quick. When I let go of her she turned her attention to my mistake.

“Shit happens, Riah. It’s just a car.”

“I know,” I replied. “I’m just so mad at myself.”

“Don’t be, hon. Your mother will get over it.”

*

 

“She looks beautiful.”

This is the third, fourth, maybe even fifth time I’ve heard someone say this. They stand over the casket, looking down at the body that is supposed to be my grandmother but does not look like her—a face that seems to be missing something: her puffy red cheeks, the fuzzy blonde hair that surrounded her mouth, a smirk that indicated that she always had something ornery to say.

“She looks good, Jul,” I hear someone say to my mom. I hear her sniff.

When no one is standing at the casket, my brothers and I walk over together. Gabe points at the FitBit that is on her wrist.

“Wait, they’re burying that?” he whispers. Noah and I look at each other.

“Yes, Gabe. It was hers,” I tell him. I save him the admonishment I would have given at any other time but now.

There is no heartbeat for the FitBit to read.

She had asked me to go to Dick’s Sporting Goods to buy her the FitBit that is now forever wrapped around her wrist. She loved to track her steps and tell us how many miles she had walked. She must have felt that she was accomplishing something; becoming healthier in her old age. She had beat cancer. What couldn’t she do?

It just had to come back. She thought she was in the clear.

I wonder how long the battery in the fitBit will last before it shuts off forever. I wonder if thousands of years from now someone will exhume her and be in awe of the technology that we buried our dead with. Will her tattoos fade to nothing? Will they be able to make out what they once looked like? I wonder what else they will find in the caskets of others. Or won’t find.

*

 

I have her crooked teeth. I have her green eyes.

I have her light brown hair that I’ve seen in pictures of her, where she is in her twenties and as ornery as ever.

When I am shown a picture of her standing in the yard with her long, light brown hair and a striped, two-piece bathing suit, I think for a second that I am looking at a picture of myself.

The hair to the waist.

The hand on the hip.

The green eyes.

The smile.

It is me.

I want to keep this fragment of her. Piece together every detail and clearly picture her as a twenty-year-old woman. Reveal some indication of who I should be.

*

 

“You can have anything you want,” Gaga tells me. “Don’t be shy.”

I’m 11 years old, staying the night at my grandmother’s house. A girl’s night is what she called it when she told my grandpa that he would have to sleep on the couch. I want my granddaughter next to me.

I wonder if my grandpa is mad that I am taking his bed, but Gaga doesn’t seem to be worried. She continues to search through her jewelry box as I sit on her bed, showing me necklaces that she thinks I might like.

“What about this gold locket?” she asks. “There’s no photo in it, but it’s still pretty on the outside.”

She hands the necklace to me, and I open it anyway, finding nothing inside.

“You can have it,” she says. “It was my mother’s, your great grandma.”

I think to myself that I will never wear this necklace. that I won’t risk losing it, or breaking it, or tangling it. I play with the locket some more, opening and closing it, then set it aside on her bed.

“Now what about some perfume?” she asks. “Do you have any?”

“Just lotion,” I say, and she shakes her head.

“Well, this one is a must-have.” She shows me a bottle that is labeled “Tommy Girl.” She takes the cap off and sprays my neck.

“Smell good?” she asks. I nod.

“Then it’s yours.” She puts the cap back on and adds the perfume to my pile of new belongings.

In the morning, after eating breakfast at Bob Evans, Gaga drops me off at home. My mother is at the door to greet me.

“I missed you!” she says as she hugs me. “Did you have fun?”

“Yeah,” I reply as I wave at the forest green Subaru that drives away. I hold up the gift bag full of my new items. “Gaga gave me a ton of stuff.”

Mom rolls her eyes. “Of  course she did.”

*

 

“You need to come to the hospital after you get off work,” my mother texts me. “She wants to see you.”

It’s the middle of January and there’s snow on the ground when I begin to drive down the road. I feel the hot tears fall down my face, knowing this can’t be good. I feel my lotion coming off in the sweat of my hands, making them slip on the steering wheel.

She’s going to be fine. She has to be. How can I live without her?

When I see the bright yellow Mcdonald’s sign at the end of town, I realize that I passed the hospital. I turn into the nearest gas station and head back towards the hospital, admonishing myself for wasting precious time.

When I walk into her room, my mother is sitting on a green couch. Gaga is lying in the bed, sitting up, talking with my mother.

“Why are you crying?” she asks me when I walk into the room. I walk to the side of the bed and hug her.

“I’m not going anywhere,” she says to me. “Stop crying.”

I nod, then sit next to my mother on the couch. They continue their conversation that they were having before. Although there is an IV in her hand, Gaga still runs it through her hair. Although there is no gel in her hair, it still stands up straight.

Within 24 hours we will be told that she has six months or less.

Within a week she will be gone.

*

 

When calling hours are over, we begin collecting the scraps of my grandmother’s life that had been on display: baby photos, photos of her holding her grandchildren, scrapbooks of trips to Disney World, and pamphlets that read Heather Lenore.

For a moment it seems that everyone has stopped crying.

“What time do we have to be back here tomorrow?” I ask Mom as she closes one of the scrapbooks.

“Nine,” she replies. “Maybe earlier.”

Once everything has been picked up, my mother goes to thank the pastor. I stand in the doorway with my brothers. We look over at our grandmother before leaving. The idea of leaving her alone is haunting—a strange feeling that comes with the realization that her body is not under our care anymore.

Here lays a woman that would fall asleep in the tattoo chair.

*

 

My mother asks me to speak at the funeral. I write what I want to say in the notes on my phone.

I find myself struggling to breathe as I talk to my family and friends.

I don’t think about the consequences of cursing in a church as I talk about my grandmother.

I think that maybe the only reason I still want to believe in God is because I want to see my grandmother again.

I tell everyone that my grandmother was the kind of person who would flip other drivers off with a crooked middle finger, put her Subaru in Sport mode, and pass them on Johnson Road. She was the kind of person to tell you how it is. She always had something to say. She always told you she loved you.

I was the kind of person that sat next to her in the passenger seat, giggling as we flew down Johnson. I was the granddaughter that she talked to about sex, smoking weed, and how ugly cancer can be. I was the person she wanted to see as she was dying, but the person that she did not want seeing her.

I wish I had kept more remnants of you. Every now and then I find a birthday card from years ago. Your nickname, Gaga, signed with love.

Mariah Heather Lanzer. In between who I am and my family name is the woman that I search for.