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We pull out of the driveway of my grandparents’ house as I unwrap a Kit-Kat nearly melted from waiting so long for the goodbyes. No opening our candy until we pulled out of the driveway. But I was content. Another weekend down, and I had a full seven days before I had to make the 30-minute drive back here to sit in the basement and attempt to watch Blue’s Clues on the hazy television while Mom talked to Grandma about the dealings of the week. Yet there I am, just a bored little first grader waiting for the call from upstairs followed by candy selection and the drive home. When it came I bolted upstairs, past Grandpa’s collection of hats lining the steep staircase and straight to the refrigerator plastered with memories of Christmas and family reunions past. Second drawer from the bottom, under the vegetables. I could only hope that I pulled out a shoebox too heavy for me to lift. That meant a fresh supply of treats whose sole purpose was being eaten by me on the too-long drive home. Otherwise it was just a mound of undesirable Necco’s. Mom only let me have one piece though. I didn’t understand the concept of spoiling my appetite for dinner. Neither, apparently, did Grandma. She always slid a fresh Snickers or Butterfinger in my hand as she bent down to hug me goodbye. You could smell the beginnings of Sunday’s spaghetti sauce from scratch in her shirt.

There was one Saturday every month that we would make the drive with excitement. It marked the day I got to sleep over. Grandpa would go out with his golfing friends, and I had Grandma all to myself. My sister’s didn’t even get to come. I hop out of our Mazda MPV and run across the lawn to the front door, not caring that Grandpa hated when I ran on the lawn. “That’s what backyards were for.” I bang the high-pitched doorbell before inviting myself in. Grandma is in the kitchen baking cookies for our night together. The cookies always lacked what I thought to be an adequate amount of chocolate chips, but it didn’t bother me. Some days I would be lucky to get there early enough to make them with her. She always gave me the fun jobs; cracking the eggs, managing the electric beater, putting the dough onto the greased sheets. I always made them too big. Grandma told me to make them smaller; but I never listened, and she never minded. Into the oven and off to the den for an episode of Power Rangers for me while she knit quietly in the worn black armchair. I jumped around like a Power Ranger and she would look at me and smile softly, like a distraction that she wished she had more often. I would always hide in embarrassment behind the pillows of the floral patterned couch when I saw that smile and heard a quiet chuckle. Mom said I was getting too old for Power Rangers. Grandma never thought twice about it.

When the cookies came out it was time for dinner and bowling. I always got to take at least two gooey treats on the road to Portillo’s for a hot dog (ketchup only), small fry and chocolate milkshake. From Portillo’s it was to the lanes for 10 frames. She was a league bowler as her white shoes with red trimming claimed. I sat with my legs outstretched as she bent down to lace my size fives on top of my high white socks. She ordered a pitcher of soda with her Wisconsin accent lingering from her years of growing up in a small town just south of Milwaukee. Bumper’s up, neon orange ball in hand, scoreboard set.

I never understood her method. She tiptoed up to the line holding the black ball with both hands. She puts one foot forward, bringing the ball back in her right hand and seamlessly sending it barreling towards the 10 white opponents 60 feet ahead with all the strength of a woman pushing 70. She gets on one knee, hands placed on the wood paneled floor at her side, and leans left or right, guiding the ball straight as an arrow for a ninepin pick-up. A spare is soon to follow. I clamber up to the foul line, sure not to cross it as that is against the rules, says Grandma. I fling my arm back and forward releasing much too late and watching the ball sink into the gutter 10 feet from my hand. I turn around with a pout and see her smiling while attempting to sympathize with a first grader in a bowling alley. Second roll. She comes up behind me, taking my right arm in hers and brings it back and forth. The ball creeps down the lane straight enough to clip the corner pin and make my day.

Gran 9 – / X 9 – / 8 – 1 X X 9 – / 9- 0 X 7 – 2 171

Jack 0 – 1 2 – 0 1 – 0 5 – 2 0 – 0 9 – 0 4 – 0 3 – / 0 – 3 4 – 3 44

A year goes by, and I hide behind my mom’s leg while tears roll down her face. It’s a clean white room with wires and beeping and confusion all around. She is lying there barely breathing, and I don’t know what to do. I have never been in a hospital before. Pancreatic cancer is a malignant tumor in the pancreas. Fewer than five percent of those diagnosed live five years after their diagnosis. I didn’t understand cancer, or death. So when my mom walked downstairs toward me at the computer, I could only measure the seriousness of what she was telling me by the number of tears running down her face. Her mother was dying. She told me to pray for her at night, so I did. If a few words saved her, I could manage that.

Be near me Lord Jesus/ I ask you to stay/ Close by me forever/ And love me I pray/ Bless all the dear children/ In your tender care/ And take us to heaven/ To live with you there. And please help Grandma because she is not feeling good.

I visited her at the hospital twice. The lab coats and computer screens were straight from television. I would sit in the bleak waiting room with my video game, perfectly entertained while mom sat next to me, emotionless. We are called into the swaying double doors. I follow obediently without shutting my game off. The nurse with the cinnamon bun hair opens the door, and I walk in. I sit in the chair opposite the hospital bed and glue my eyes to the handheld screen once again. I look up to see mom holding back tears, squeezing Grandma’s hand. Yet she lies there with characteristic soft smile, wrapped in blankets with her arms taped to tubes. I was looking forward to going home to play with our new basketball hoop. Either that or bring out my skateboard and try to show off for my cute neighbor. I put my mind anywhere but a hospital. An hour later I squeak out a quiet goodbye to which I hear, “I love you Jack, thank you for visiting.” I shuffle quickly out of the room, and the drive home is filled with a silence I didn’t comprehend. Next weekend was our special Saturday. I just hoped she would be feeling better for cookies, bowling, a sleepover and Mickey Mouse pancakes.

Now I stand in black watching two men in reflective orange vests do their day’s work, piling dirt into a six-foot hole. It’s too hot for suit coats, but we are dressed up regardless. The air is still. Trees don’t waver. Clouds don’t move. Leaves don’t rustle. People don’t breathe. No one is crying. There are no tears left. I never cried. I didn’t know how to. I didn’t understand what I would be crying for. Mom just told me that Grandma is in a better place so that was good. She will still come back to visit. I’m bored. Mom didn’t let me bring my Gameboy. She wasn’t saying much at all. Peter was organizing a game of capture the flag back home that I needed to be back for. I would get to see all my aunts and uncles this weekend anyway. A man in a sleek black coat and white collar steps in front, and we pray. “Alice always requested this prayer and I regret to say that I couldn’t do it more often before she left us,” he started. I clasp my hands together, but I don’t close my eyes. I never did when we prayed. I didn’t see the point. In a few minutes, that gravel road would take us out of the wrought iron gates, their black tips sharp in the dead air.

It’s Saturday afternoon and I walk down the stairs with a smile on my face, cowboy sleeping bag and red backpack filled with pajamas and some Sunday clothes in hand. Mom turns around to see me and gasps with a lump of remorse in her throat. I sit in the booth in our kitchen and wait for her to be done, so we can go to Grandma’s. She wasn’t in the hospital anymore so it’s about time we start our sleepovers again. Mom places herself next to me and puts a trembling hand on my shoulder. “Jack, Grandma isn’t going to be able to have sleepovers anymore. Grandma passed away.” I put my face in my sleeping bag. Cry. God doesn’t even like me. I prayed for Grandma every night since Mom told me to, and then God goes and let’s this happen. What is the point of praying if it doesn’t even do anything? There is no God. Mom said that I could talk to Grandma in my prayers, but she was lying. Grandma really was gone and there was no way of talking to her or hearing from her or seeing her ever again. I wish there was a God because then I would have someone to blame this on. But faith left me the minute the truth made its home inside my head. I was alone.

Looking back, I like to try to blame myself. I was a self-absorbed kid who couldn’t muster up a final “I love you” in the hospital. I couldn’t even bring myself to say it to the mound of dirt that was now her home. I was the one that got to see the marriage of her youngest son, the birth of two more grandkids, her oldest granddaughters graduate from college. Things she would have appreciated, but I never did. My faith in God and my faith in myself was buried with her. I haven’t been back to her grave since, but I can imagine what it would be like.

I see a boy driving back through the previously misunderstood lines of granite and marble stones. He has on black dress pants and a collared blue striped shirt with a white undershirt in an ill attempt to respect what he neglected for several years before. He doesn’t know what to think as the car bumps down the gravel road. He parks at the side of the road and gets out, walking the 50 feet across the dying grass and flower petals blown about from others’ tributes. He didn’t bring any sort of flowers. There was little that a bouquet of daisies could do now. The black marble is weathered. He reads it for the first time for he didn’t read it before. He squats down and runs his hands through the grass that lies in front of the marble stone. He apologizes. It’s raining.

Jackons Parr’s Bio:  Jackson is a sophomore undergraduate at the University of Iowa in Iowa City. Currently studying English-Secondary Education, he plans on pursuing a Master’s of Fine Arts in writing. Originally from Elmhurst, Illinois, he has spent the previous five summers living and working throughout Door County, Wisconsin.