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…
