constance | In lieu of the expected Harry Potter post

I wrote a letter to my grandmother (a retired librarian) last year. We'd been talking about books at dinner, books we loved as children, books that she chose especially for us, and she knew us so well that thirty-plus years later I still reread those books, still remember some word for word, still talk about them. They still define me in such a way that I still feel, at thirty-eight years and counting, that people can't understand me without knowing exactly how I felt about certain books, and I talk about them -- with grownups, and with a starry-eyed enthusiasm that I reserve for very few things in life. That was the conversation, anyway, and I wrote the letter just to let her know that everyone should have a person like that in her life, and that I was glad she was mine.

She hasn't read too much in the past few years. She's had crippling arthritis and her limbs were all twisted in knot and she couldn't walk or hold things, couldn't hear well, had gone blind, didn't want pain meds because the son who lived with her was a former addict. She's lived the past few years trapped in her own body, in a great deal of pain, unable to do any of the things she loved to do.

She finally decided to go on pain meds on Sunday night. By Monday morning she'd died, but for the first time in years her hands were straight and she wasn't in pain. I'm keeping that in mind this week. That and the fact that even though I wasn't able to say goodbye to her, I know that she knew that I loved her.