Chapter 1. Homecoming

“Grandma’s not expected to make it through the night…”

There was no quiver in Dad’s voice over the telephone, though he paused and let out a sigh as he conveyed the news of his mother’s imminent passing – not that he wasn’t deeply touched, but everyone knew she had no regrets and made no apologies. She had lived her life to the fullest every day, and everything about her character shouted, “Take me as I am!” In her final months, she had willed herself to live just long enough to snap a five-generation portrait with her newborn great-great-granddaughter; that framed photograph was her crowning trophy.

We had fortunately already had a chance to say our goodbyes, having hit the highway on the initial news of her failing health just a few weeks before.

I hung up the phone and sat up in bed, gradually letting the news sink in. It didn’t seem right to go back to sleep while she embarked on her final journey out of mortality, so I tiptoed downstairs and paced around aimlessly. I spotted the camcorder on the TV cabinet, sat back in my “Papa Bear” chair, and rewound the tape with the footage of our road trip. After watching the tape in its entirety, I sank back further into my oversize recliner and just stared at the ceiling. My mind wandered back to that last meeting with Grandma.

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“Be very careful around her,” I had warned our four young kids as we pulled up to the nursing home after the long trek from Oregon to Orem, “She’s really old!”

“Well is she older than the Titanic?” scoffed my eight-year old son Jaedin, who, obsessed by his latest interest, had cleared every Titanic book from his school library’s shelves.

“I don’t know,” I answered, “but I’ll get online later and check for you.”

My wife rolled her eyes, having instantly recognized a habitual, masked attempt to use the kids as an excuse for checking e-mail on vacation. After plucking the kids out of the tight confines of our car, we lined them up against the wall outside the nursing home entrance. Knowing a lecture was coming, they preemptively rolled their eyes in unison; I tried to hide my own smile as I debated whether the familiar gesture had been inherited or learned.

“Now remember, each of you,” I said sternly, regaining my composure and ignoring their collective groan, “when you step inside, I don’t want to hear one WORD about the smell!”

They each nodded and went cross-eyed as my index finger passed directly in front of their noses.

We made our way to Grandma’s room as cautiously and quietly as we could manage. We had just seen her the previous year, but at first sight she seemed decades older than I remembered. It wasn’t long, though, until her sense of humor broke through and proved that, despite her recent ailments, she was still as young at heart as ever. We had some good laughs with “Grandma Hose-Nose” and her pet oxygen tank, but soon the laughing alone seemed to sap the energy right out of her.

I glanced at her fancy dresser, on top of which stood the most valuable of her few remaining earthly possessions, poised within an arm’s reach of four volatile bundles of energy that stood on the brink of bursting, having just been released from a marathon, 12-hour incarceration. Besides demolishing these treasures, I feared that our wrecking crew might pass along an unseen, airborne virus, overwhelm her with their excited clambering, or otherwise do her in right then and there.

With a number of these frightful scenarios seizing my mind, I started nudging the kids and hinted to Grandma that we needed to leave. Though we kept the visit as brief as we could justify, we did manage to capture the whole event on video to prepare for that distant day when our precious and very rambunctious children might actually appreciate the significance of the occasion.

After strategically posing each of them for an individual picture with their great-grandmother, we gave her frail shell some loose hugs, bade her farewell with a small hint of finality, and checked into a nearby motel to put the kids to bed.

Jaedin was half asleep by the time I remembered my purported justification for checking e-mail. When I opened my notebook computer, the screen’s glow instantly lit up the dark room. I covered myself and the notebook with a blanket so as not to wake the younger children. Inside my makeshift tent, I typed “Titanic” into a search engine and emerged again after a few quick clicks.

“No Jaedin,” I whispered to him upon finding the answer to his earlier question, “not quite.”

He rolled over, altogether unimpressed, and muttered, “Then she’s not all that old.”

I kissed him on the forehead. “It’s been a long day, son,” I said with a smile, “Now get some sleep!”