My grandparents partially raised me and we were very close until after I lived on my own, then they moved up North. We called each other on the phone after that, but I’d let a lot of time elapse since the last call so one day (in 2000) I decided to call up my grandma and see how she was doing.
“Fine, except my kidneys have stopped,” she said. I was all like, “What do you mean? Why didn’t you call to say something?” but you know that generation, they don’t want to cause a fuss. So I called both my jobs and said I wasn’t going to be in this week, threw some clothes in a grocery bag and drove 5 hours to go stay with them. She’d just had breast cancer and the new, experimental chemotherapy she was trying did in her kidneys.
So I got to stay there with her and my grandpa for the last week of her life. We did a lot of talking – even funny stuff. We talked about the afterlife (is there one? etc.) and I told her that if she wanted to hang out and watch over me, that would be OK. “How long do you want me to do that?” she asked. Later on, she gave me the 1940’s Singer sewing machine that she bought with their wedding money. “Are you sure?” I asked. She said, “Well, I’m not going to be using it anymore.” The last thing she wanted to eat was coleslaw from Kentucky Fried Chicken.
When the pain got too bad, the hospice nurses gave her morphine and she mostly slept a lot after that, and she wasn’t lucid enough to talk so we just stayed there by her. When she finally died, I’d already had to go back home a few hours before, but their dog knew what was going on somehow and went to the kitchen to get my aunt and led her back to my grandma’s room, so she didn’t die alone.
I realize this is a little more than a phone call story, but it still has that feel to it. If I hadn’t randomly decided to call them up to chat, I never would have had this last week with my grandma.
@stevenb, my heart goes out to you and your family. It’s good to have a chance to say goodbye.