Mournful Memory

    I remember it, minute for minute, like it happened just today.  I can effortlessly replay it in my head over, and over again.  I awoke suddenly to the sound of something so disarming that I immediately arose, knowing something was very wrong. I rolled over with such a jolt that I pegged my head off the night stand to my left.  I didn’t even stop to notice the ache that shot through my temple.  I haphazardly scuffed across my bedroom floor through the long archway across the hall, eyes barely open, following the disturbing weeping.  I felt cold and hollow, like I knew something was not right, my head was light empty and without thought, I felt sick to my stomach and that uneasy icky-ness went down to my toes, like I should not be in such a hurry to discover what was and or had happened.  With a thud, I made out the sound of a dial tone, as a telephone clearly hit the receiver and fell to the ground below.  I stumbled into my parents’ room that Saturday morning, focusing on only the red block numbers that shown bright on the digital clock straight ahead, 8:09 a.m.  I scanned the room knowing that my mother should be in Amsterdam at dialysis with my grandmother.  She had taken her every Saturday at seven for the past three years.  It was beyond routine.  My vision directed me straight to the eyes of my mother.  They were puffy and red, so squinty they looked like tiny slits of a reptile.  Upset would be an understatement.  She was doubled over, wheezing with deep sighs and sobs.  The sight of it made me want to dart out of the room, but instinctively I did the exact opposite.  I narrowed my eyes to her trembling hands, wet from her own tears.  I placed my hands atop her and asked the stupidest question imaginable, “Are you okay?”  She turned away and screeched out in a strained voice behind labored breathes in a low raspy whisper filled with immense emotion, “Grandma’s gone”. I hugged my mother, knowing that  she’d never hug hers again.