The last time I saw my grandmother she was standing on the balcony of a hospital. The sun was behind her, her hair a halo. My mother stood beside her. I was getting into a car with my father. I looked up before I got in and she was there. She didn’t wave but I knew she could see me.
We had just visited her in the ward. She was reading Les Carylon’s Great War when we walked in. She put it down and we went out and sat on the balcony for a while. I don’t remember what we talked about.
I wish I had held her hand.
That’s not something we do. You don’t need to hug people or hold hands.
They were pretty sure my grandmother had a tumour inside her head. It was growing at a fair clip. I was visiting from Sydney and drove to Lismore with my parents to see her. I thought it might be the last time, but I had no reason to be certain. She was walking around, talking, reading Carylon. She held her hands behind her back like she always did, probably rocking on her heels slightly.
I went back to Sydney. I thought something might be wrong with her. I wrote her a letter. Thank you, I said, for being one person who stood by me. You know, when that happened. I really appreciated that. I never thanked you before. I put it into an envelope with a photo of my son. He was standing next to a surfboard he had just rode in the ocean. He was 6.
If I sent the letter it would reveal that I thought she was dying, because for what other reason would I suddenly thank her for something that happened 7 years ago? So I didn’t send it because I didn’t want her to think that she was dying.
She got sicker. My mother told me. They moved her to the hospital at the Gold Coast. They would give her cancer treatment there. She was 87 and it had been two weeks since I saw her on the balcony.
They didn’t seem to get around to the treatment. Things were moving fast. I didn’t know if I should go up there again. I was waiting for some kind of sign or word. Maybe I should go up on Sunday because it was Mother’s Day.
Hang Mother’s Day, my aunt said. Don’t worry about that.
I didn’t know what she meant.
My sister and I decided to fly up that night, on Mother’s Day. It was probably a good time to go, before anything happened.
My father picked us up from the airport on the Gold Coast. You might want to prepare yourself, he said, Pat is not…she might not be awake.
My grandmother had fallen into a coma. She laid on her back in a hospital bed, her face thin. Her hair was not right. My aunts and mother sat in chairs around her bed.
We stayed in an apartment overlooking the ocean. I didn’t walk on the sand.
In the morning we went back to the hospital. My mother had slept on a roll-away bed in the room with my grandmother.
My grandmother had spoken in the middle of the night. What are we going to do? she asked.
We’re going to go home, my mother said.
We waited. I didn’t allow myself the words to say what we were waiting for. We were sitting there. My aunt sat on the roll-away bed, her legs curled underneath herself, like a little kid.
My sister made jokes. We laughed because she has a way of doing that to you.
At some point I went downstairs with my aunts to get a coffee. Or tea, probably. I told them about the letter. They made me go upstairs and sit with my grandmother and read her the letter.
There was a crack in the windscreen of mother’s car and it would need to be fixed. There was some to-ing and fro-ing but it was booked in and someone was fixing it.
At some time in the afternoon my father, sister and I went to pick up the car. The windscreen was fixed. Except now I can’t remember how we drove the car back. I don’t know if my sister would drive it in a city she didn’t know and I remember I was in the car when my mother called my father and told him.
She was gone.
It was 10 May 2010.