THIS IS US
Coping With Unemployment While My Grandmother Is Dying
Weddings, omniscient aliens, and a Tyrannosaurus rex
After losing my job, I moved home and attended my cousin’s wedding. The morning of, someone asked where Grandma was. I said I’d find her. I went outside and there she was wandering around the parking lot — small, curly white hair, wrinkle-eaten face.
“Are you excited about the wedding?” I asked.
“No,” she said.
I put a hand on her shoulder.
She said, “No. This is not my world. You know, I woke up this morning very sad and I don’t know why. I had your grandfather take me to the nursery. That always makes me happy. I like to watch the flowers grow. I like to watch things grow.”
And I said, “Nice, that’s nice.”
She looked up at the hotel we were all staying in and said, “The world was so broken when I was young. I had so many plans. I had so many plans to fix it. But, well, then I got married and had children and I took all of that energy for those plans and put them into protecting my children so that one day they could fix things — but, they just went on ahead and got married and had their own children and now those children are getting married too and — and, well, the world is still broken.”
She placed a hand over the top of her eyes to get a good look at me.
“Don’t worry, Grandma, I have no plans to get married. I can’t even keep a job,” I told her.
But she still looked sad. And she said, “Everything moves so fast. It just keeps moving faster and faster.”
“Do you need to sit down?” I said
And she nodded. So, I took her by the arm and walked with her into the shade of a nearby tree.
My grandmother walked in and said, “I am tired today — I had a nightmare last night. And your grandfather said I was squeaking in my sleep. You know — eek, eek, eek,” she said.
I said, “Maybe you were a lab rat?”
She laughed. She said, “Ha. Well, no — you know, I don’t remember, but I’ve had nightmares before where I am running from a monster, and it had those tiny arms…