Please call.
911.
The text message from my mother-in-law wasn’t a shock. My husband’s grandpa is 94. Can barely walk. Doesn’t know who anyone is most days. She’s worn out with taking care of him. It’s past his time. We missed her calls during the bedtime routine.
I called. She asked for my husband. I handed it to him. Walked back to the kitchen to make lunches for tomorrow.
“Oh, no,” I hear him say gently and I like my head back into the living room, catch his eye, mouth “Grandpa?” he smiles but then…
Then he falters. In voice and in body. I think he’s going to fall.
“My dad died!?”
His dad. Goes to the gym every day. Works full time. No. I am confused. He didn’t say that. I can’t hear him. I don’t believe him. His dad is probably in better shape than we both are. That’s not what he said. He finishes and hands me the phone.
“Talk to my mom,” he says dazedly. She gives me a phone number for his aunt, his dad’s sister.
“Have him call her when he can,” she says. Pauses. “I’m sorry.”
I hand him water, tell him he can call her later, put my arms around him. The kids are still awake, chirping in a way that they think is quiet. He is shaking.
“He sat down and…fell asleep. He never woke up,” he says. “They found him this afternoon. He didn’t come into the office.”
He calls his aunt. He asks me for paper. He writes. He paces. He listens, he talks. He hangs up and we sit in silence. I hold his hand. I shift. I start to talk. I stop.
“I wish I knew what to say,” I said. “I could do an interpretive dance if you want.”
He laughs, sort of. “I don’t know what to say either, ” he says.
Then he cries.
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