Every plan is a tiny prayer to Father Time*

_{(*from “What Sarah Said” by Death Cab for Cutie)}

What I want back is the night when I was eight. When my sister, my cousin, and I spent the night at my grandma’s. When she fed us canned peaches, heavy with syrup, and the sugar made us giddy. Canned peaches became “giggle peaches,” and we hid under the blanket in her guest room as she snuck up to us with a plastic gorilla figurine and scared us. I want the shrieks and screams and joy back.

I want to return to the afternoon in her front room when we all still lived nearby. When my cousin Ben was still a toddler and somehow we noticed he had a seriously cavernous belly button and what I thought that cavernous belly button needed was an M&M. His belly button was perfect for holding bite-sized candies. We all still fit in the front room then, all the aunts and uncles and all the cousins, still small and growing. Before the dining room extension was built, and Grandma’s tiny dining room still had the upstairs where she stored all her decorative plates. 

I would like to learn to play euchre from her again, her knobby fingers helping me hold the cards. One more evening of Skip-Bo around her dining room table as Grandpa tells us Grandma likes to cheat and peek, and an early morning of eggs and cinnamon-sugar toast as I pumped the sewing machine foot paddle that held up her kitchen table. I would like to see her spoon instant coffee into her worn Tupperware mug again.

I wish for one more day picking my grandma up for shopping and lunch. She was already sad by this point—my grandpa was gone and she didn’t know what to do without him—but she’d climb into my car, and we’d head to town. When I’d call to invite her out, she’d hem and haw, not sure she needed to go anywhere or do anything. Wasn’t I too busy? But as soon as she buckled that seatbelt, she’d take out her list. We should go to Wal-Mart, she’d say. How about Goodwill? Lunch will probably be at Cracker Barrel, but she loved a Coke from McDonald’s, so it would be okay to stop by there. 

My grandma was with me the day Chris called to tell me his secrets. Not all of them, that would take time, but just the beginning. I was walking out of the Cracker Barrel dining room, had just passed the giant empty fireplace, when he told me there was a problem. My grandma ahead of me, so she didn’t see me stop and grip the table next to the wall. She didn’t see my face or my life collapse. I drove her to Tractor Supply after where we looked at wind chimes and flowers. 

I’d like one more day before my fist got too big to fit into the coffee mug full of change she kept in her kitchen. I’d like to show her my (probably not really that great) report card again and grab as much change as I could as a reward. She’d write my name in permanent marker on the baggie full of money, her big swoopy letters labeling my treasure “Mary Beautiful.”

Maybe just one more night at our college apartment, where Amy and I would watch Beaches and drink cheap alcohol and drunkenly cry about Grandma dying one day. Grandma and Grandpa were both alive and well and had, unbeknownst to us, decades left. We were young and hadn’t lost anyone close to us yet. The idea of losing her was unbearable when we were twenty. At forty three, it still is.

I want to hear her tell the story of reaching out for my pacifier as Grandpa drove me down the road; to hear about Amy’s pockies and how Melissa “didn’t have no food.” I’d like to say something inappropriate just one more time and have her tell me how naughty I am, but then cackle the loudest. I’d like to drive home from her house with a sandwich bag full of blue Sour Patch Kids—the only ones she refused to eat—and realize they all tasted like smoke when I tried to eat them. 

All those stories we don’t remember that died with her. I cannot abide it.

Maybe I could have just have a week? A week of all the memories relived. I promise to pay attention and not rush and listen well and write everything down. I promise to answer the phone when she calls and stay at her kitchen table just a little bit longer. And since this is my fantasy and I get to do whatever I want in it, I’d like time to move very slow that week. I’d like to keep my eyes wide open, and my body close to hers.

I would like Edward’s Drive-In to be open one more day so I could eat giant tenderloin sandwiches and onion rings with my grandparents. Just one more afternoon where Grandpa talked to every person in the place, and Grandma finally said, “Robert, it’s time to go.”