Two Women

Today is my grandmother's birthday. 89. All things considered, she's doing well. Yes, her eyesight is approaching nil, and she battled back after a near-fatal heart attack last July, but she's a tough specimen, defiant to the last in that modest, quiet way that has seen her through the death of her husband more than 40 years hence, the loss of a son in childbirth, the raising of another son and a daughter, being a working mom before such critters were acknowledged as a voting bloc by campaign consultants, a landlady, and a faithful Catholic of the old-school Chicago "I don't care if it's snowing, I'm walking to Church" stripe. She says on the phone this morning that she misses me as I wish her a happy birthday. She is living with my mom and step-dad in Chicago, and being in Seattle I miss her. I know I'll see her in October, when my wife and I attend my mom's 60th. And should my grandmother keep her spirits and health up for another year, I know I will be there as she laughs at a 90th birthday cake coming her way.

I know she doesn't get into the whole Internet thing, or can even read this, but I love you Grandma. Happy birthday, and may you know how much you are loved and thanked for all your help, kindness, and support you gave me when I was young.

Seeing your family extend into, and likely beyond, the octogenarian range, you can't help think about where you are going to end up on that invisible timeline that stretches out before you to some undisclosed horizon. As the man says, no one gets out of life alive. Add to that tiramisu a layer of newfound maturity when you hit your mid-30s, and you find yourself writing another rough draft as you write your novels. This time, it's a will.

My wife drafted up hers yesterday, and I have to admit I wasn't prepared for seeing my wife's post-mortem wishes in black and white, nestled in the sterile landscape of a Microsoft Word document. Even though I felt her next to me, even though I could smell her perfume and hear her voice, I suddenly felt as if she was gone, taken by some unseen force. And there was me, in the kitchen and alone, holding her wishes in my hands, just trying to find the courage to hand away her belongings to friends and relatives. A preview of grief as I projected myself to a future point on that timeline where I remain and she has gone ahead. Days and nights alone, and the house is deathly quiet, her life gone and mine reduced to a half-portion.

I held her later that night on the couch, asking her for something not rational, something primal and reassuring. I didn't want her to go. I don't want her to be absent, and I'm terrified that if she goes and I survive the shock, will I start to forget her in time. Will pieces of her vanish from me as I give her jewelry to friends and family, as I donate her clothes to charity? In Kevin Brockmeier's new novel "The Brief History of the Dead," the newly deceased, who occupy a sort of urban limbo, come to understand that they continue on in their spectral state because someone in the living world remembers them, and as a plague reduces the population in the living world, the strands get severed and the memories of the specters cannot be sustained. And it makes me wonder, in a depressive pallor, if the same can be said for her possessions. Once gone, will a complete picture of my wife remain? Will little bits of her exist in the necklace, in the shoes, in the perfume she collects? How long will her scent last on the bedding? What remains and for how long?

This weekend, I make my will. I'm not looking forward to it.