To the Moon and Back
Being 6, and learning to say goodbye.
“That’s not my grandma,” I said, standing on my tippy toes and looking into the big box. I was pretty sure we could go, ’cause it wasn’t. No way, José.
“It is, sweetie. I know she doesn’t look the same,” my mom said. She took a comb and a hairspray out of her purse. “They didn’t get her hair and makeup right.” She put a brown curl around her finger. When she pressed the little white button at the top of the hairspray, it made a sound like a Halloween cat.
You don’t know this, but my mom is a hairdresser. She’s a real good one, too. She makes French braids and piggy tails for me and Heather. She colors her own hair, but I don’t know how her arms don’t get tired doing that. Sometimes different ladies come to the house for perms, and my mom puts lots of pink and blue and yellow curlers all over their heads. I sort of wish she didn’t know how to do perms, though. They make the house smell like a giant egg salad sandwich.
I still wasn’t so sure it was my grandma. I looked one more time to double check. She had on a blue dress like the one my grandma wears to church, but it was hard to tell it was my grandma and not someone else’s. (Things can get mixed up, you know. Even grandmas, I think.) Her eyes were closed and her skin looked yellow and her mouth was frowny.
I looked around at the room where me and my mom were standing. It was August, so the sun was shining the hardest it does all year. I knew right where we were. It was Doane Beale & Ames, the funeral place right across the street from where my grandma lives. We went by this place all the time, but this was the first time we were inside.
Inside the box, I saw two hands crisscross applesauce over each other. They had a lot of brown spots, which sort of made me think of a giraffe. We always held hands — me and my grandma — everywhere we went. We held hands whenever we walked to Westgate Pharmacy to pick up medicines. And when we would go to New England Pizza for lunch, and especially when we went to the harbor to look at the boats, ’cause that’s a long walk.
I watched her hands when we baked together to make chocolate chip cookies. And her hands would pass blocks to me when we built forts and castles. She had a gold watch with I’s and V’s on the clock part. But she didn’t wear pink nail polish, like my mom. And she didn’t bite her nails all the way down to the nubs, like I do sometimes. I really knew ‘xactly what my grandma’s hands looked like.
Even if I didn’t want to believe it, I could tell by the hands that it was her.
Heather wasn’t there. She was too young for ‘awake,’ my mom said. Heather was only two-and-a-half, that’s why. She waited in the ‘nother room with some Barbies. I was six-and-a-half then — a lot more grown up than my baby sister, though I was not too sure I was supposed to be at the awake either.
My dad wasn’t there, and he’s a whole lot older than me. You probably don’t know him, unless you bought a car at Puritan Pontiac GMC. He’s real tall, so I have to run a little to keep up with him. I figured out that three of my steps is the same as one of my dad’s steps, and sometimes I have to remind him about that. After school on Fridays, my dad picks me and Heather up at the police station in his red Thunderbird. We get to visit for two hours. My mom calls that the “court order.”
All of a sudden, I remembered Sleeping Beauty and Snow White. They were lying down in boxes fast asleep, too. Those princesses just needed someone to wake them up! And then I had a sorta good idea. We were at an awake, right?
That’s when I prayed to Jesus inside my head. I stood up on my tippy toes and touched my grandma’s hand. But I pulled back quick. She was freezing ice cold, like she was holding a snowball for too long. My mom saw what I did right then, so she started to cry. She used some Kleenex to catch her mascara that was running down her cheeks.
“Why didn’t she wake up?” I asked.
“She’s not going to, honey,” she said in a tiny voice.
“She’s really dead?”
My mom reached one arm over and gave me a side hug. I smelled her perfume. I looked down at the lacy part of my socks. And I got that lumpy feeling in my throat again.
My grandma was never gonna wake up ever again. No one even yelled at me about it. But that’s ’cause they didn’t know it was my fault.
My best friend Kimberly told me that if you step on a line, you’ll break your father’s spine. Ever since she told me that, I can’t look at a line on the sidewalk without getting a tiny bit worried. So I hop real careful over all the lines I see. Kimberly also said, “If you step on a crack, you’ll break your mother’s back.” But my mother’s back is already broken. She had an accident when Heather was a real tiny baby. I don’t know if it could break again, but just in case, I don’t step on lines or cracks. No way, José.
My grandma and I always had fun together. I used to sleep over at her house, and, when we woke up, she’d make us Cheerios with raisins. After breakfast, we would play with teddy bears, watch TV, or go out in the garden. On a very special day, we went to the Melody Tent, which is a big, yellow and red stripey tent, sort of like you see at the circus ‘cept it is for music. We saw the show “Wizard of Oz,” and I was real excited, for two reasons. One, the Good Witch looked so beautiful in her pink, sparkly dress. And two, ‘cause I’m in love with the Tinman — and my grandma knows that.
I would sleep in the Blue Room, which is the bedroom with the blue blanket. My grandma would tuck me in, and then she’d trace her finger on my eyes, and my nose, my lips, my forehead. She would say, “I love you all the way to the moon and back. More than all the grains of sand on the beach.” And I would tell her the same.
One day, my grandma was playing with her jewelry box. She took out a gold chain that had three teeny, tiny charms on it. There was a wooden anchor, a red heart, and a white cross. She said that each one had a meaning: hope, love, and charity. She asked me if I wanted the necklace. Deep down, I really did want it. But, even though my insides said yes, my mouth said, “No.” Does that happen to you ever?
The very last time I saw her was on a hot, sunny day. My mom had come to pick me up. I was just about to leave. I had my hand on the little black handle on the screen door. All of a sudden, I turned and said, “Grandma? When are you going to die?” The words came out of my mouth real quick, like when you shake a Coke bottle then twist off the cap.
She answered back, “I don’t know, Honey. Only Jesus knows.” I nodded. My mom didn’t say anything, but I felt like maybe she was making a funny face.
Then I pressed the little black handle, opened the door, and stepped outside.
One week after that, I had a weird feeling in my tummy. Sort of like when you have the mystery meat in the cafeteria, only a little bit worse. I went to my mom’s bedroom and picked up the phone. I knew my grandma’s phone number by heart, so I could dial it by myself. It rang two times. But my grandma didn’t answer. It was a different lady, a lady who sometimes stays in the Blue Room. She said my grandma wasn’t there yet, and she didn’t know why. The icky, sticky feeling got worse.
Just a little while later, on the same ‘xact day, the phone rang. My mom picked up, listened, then hung up. She sat down on her bed, crisscross applesauce, and cried into her hands. My baby sister came over and patted her back. “It’s okay, mommy,” she said.
My mom answered back, “No, it’s not.” Her voice reminded me of a wolf.
One thing I figured out is kids don’t really know what to do when their moms and dads cry. It feels upside down and inside out.
There were a lot of phone calls. I heard the grownups talking to each other. My mom kept saying things like “just a kid” and “no license.” I heard her say “swerve” and “DOA.”
My mom had to drive into town, and she took me and Heather with her in the car. We drove by the place where it happened, and my mom said to me, “See. There’s the blood.” I looked out the window. There was a stain like dried ketchup on the street across from the art supplies store, close to the sidewalk.
I think your brain has two parts. A Forever Bank and a Just For A While Bank. I am pretty sure what I saw that day went into my brain’s Forever Bank. You can kind of feel it happening.
Me and my mom and Heather all moved into my grandma’s house, not that long after the funeral. The Blue Room is where me and Heather sleep, and my mom sleeps in my grandma’s old bedroom. And now all three of us go to Westgate for medicines, and we go to New England Pizza for lunch sometimes. But we don’t go to the harbor, ’cause that’s a real long walk.
At night, my mom asks me to sleep next to her in her squishy bed. I don’t mind, ’cause I miss my grandma, too, just like she does. It’s better when we are there in the bed together, missing her together.
I asked Jesus to forgive me for my sins. I don’t know if he has yet or if he ever will. The only thing I do know is that the next time I say goodbye to you or you say goodbye to me, we shouldn’t say anything else except, “I love you to the moon and back.”
Shannon Frandsen, a writer, photographer and the editor-in-chief of Wanderlust Magazine in Thailand, grew up in Hyannis, Massachusetts. She lives in Bangkok with her husband and two daughters.
