Oh, Grandma !

by Joan Shepherd

“Your Grandma has died”, mother said as I came up the stairs from my bedroom. She had   an expression on her face that I had never seen before. Grandma was an old bedridden woman needing to be fed pureed food and diapered for the past couple of years at our house. I had never seen a dead person before, especially in our back bedroom. I looked at her pale, frail body, touched her hand for a test. There was no reaction. Grandma was dead. 

Grandma had no voice, she hadn’t spoken in a long time. No more stories to tell about her eleven children or winning ribbons at the fair or  how a mouse ran up her dress when in the tabernacle for a service.  She simply caught it in her skirt and held it until the service was over. 

Instead of speaking she tapped her gold wedding band on the metal side rail of her hospital bed. Tap…tap...tap…some sort of communication in her own Morse code. Tap…tap…tap, until the constant repetition so bothered my mother, she removed the ring. Now Grandma wasn’t tapping anymore. Nor was she wringing the sheet with her gnarled fragile fingers. Grandma was dead.

“Do I have to go to school today?” No, but like Grandma, I couldn’t say the words to tell my girlfriend why I was staying home, that Grandma was dead. There was too much happening and I didn’t want to miss anything.

The stretcher like cart squeezed through the narrow hall and came back with Grandma making a lump under the sheet covering her. Grandma was dead. 

I had seen enough. My emotions were fragile and I was embarrassed with beginning tears. I went into the bathroom and cried. 

Mayacamas Poetry Retreat

October, 2013

Joan Shepherd - When Joan was in a Salt Lake City high school, a story she wrote for her English class was selected to be included in a booklet.  After retiring from several careers, she spent more time writing and creating  art. She is writing to have her English teacher give her an "A" again and select a piece for another booklet now, 60 years later.