A ‘lil something I wrote for and about my grandma, who recently passed.

Writers’ Room 12.6

Prompt: The Last Time I Said “I love you”

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The last time I said “I love you” was under fluorescent lights in October. My mind was in a million and one places, but one of them was you. You showed up in my dream the other night…yeah, that was kinda weird. I had never seen you there before. But I knew it was you, telling me to call. So, like any good granddaughter, I stopped ignoring your pleas.

Six…five…one…I dialed the numbers, knowing I would hear something I was scared to hear. My invincible—always there—grandma, sounding quite…vincible.

Mom answered the phone “hey honey, thanks for calling.”

“Hey, can I talk to grandma?” I asked. She passed the phone, pressed speaker phone. 

“Hey, babe.” You said. We talked and talked and talked. We talked about my day job, yup another new one. It’s fine, I guess…talked about what I was up to, but I wanted to talk about you. 89 years of knowledge, life and love, and I took it for granted. So I asked you about your ex-boyfriends, and you had so many more than I’ve ever had, so I taught you what a baddie is, cause that’s what you were and you laughed, said “okaaaay” knowing you didn’t understand a damn thing I said. 

You weren’t eating your food, so I said you better eat it. It’s payback for when you forced me to drink cow milk, do you remember that, grandma? And you laughed and said “okaaay” knowing you didn’t remember a damn thing. You told me you’d be home for thanksgiving, and my heart sank “where’s home?” I asked, and you said “here or in Maplewood” and I sighed a sigh of relief, knowing that Maplewood is on Earth, USA, and I’d see you again. Mom said time to get off the phone, so we said our goodbyes. My mind was floating in another dimension now, walking through the cheese aisle, thinking about my drive home. So when you said “I love you” all I gave you was a distracted “love you too.”