CW: Death

I learn to anticipate my grandmother through the silent spaces between her words. Pecan pie means she needs to see me, needs to pass something from her hands into mine, needs to speak of things that a phone might mangle.

The weekend before her sister dies, she calls to say there is a pecan pie in her fridge. And, she says, incidental— Aunt Lois won’t wake up, her breathing is strange. When the call ends, I conjure the scaffolding of my profession, understanding that she needs me to confirm what she already knows, what the hospice nurse had told her to watch for: her sister is dying.

An hour later, I’m standing at the bedside of my Great Aunt Lois. Altered breathing pattern. Not agonal; not yet. But close, close, nearly there, 

nearly gone.

In the air between us, I hang memories out to dry on an unseen clothesline. There aren’t enough, and the ones that have survived are water-logged, shapes blurring into approximations of themselves. We’d been robbed of anything better, had spent too long running from the family monsters to dredge up what had fallen from our hands.

I leave without pulling the memories from their pins.

I leave with a pecan pie in the passenger seat.