"Mashed Potatoes"
by Sarah Zuckerman
Slowly stirring the gravy around and around in my mashed potatoes, I knew that everyone else must be feeling the same way. It is not that the potatoes were not good, or that they were too salty, or too mashed; they just weren’t hers. Grandma had always made the mashed potatoes every year on Thanksgiving, but this year she did not. She did not make the sweet potatoes either, or roast the turkey, and did not get up to take a bow when we cheered to the chef. This year she was not here at all.
I remember it all, when I knew it would be the last time I talked to my Grandma. My mom called me at work and told me she was going to the emergency room because Grandma had had some sort of aneurysm and was in a coma like state in the hospital. She asked me if I wanted her to pick me up before she went, because this may be the last time I got to see Grandma; she choked up. I left work early and collected some things from my apartment, mom drove up in her blue Volvo and we drove off.
I did not know what to say really, what do you say to someone whose mother is going to die. What do you say to yourself when your Grandmother is going to die. I did not know what to say.
She was not just some nice old lady who I visited sometimes on holidays, years of my life were spent with her. Almost every summer since I was five until I was sixteen, every school break, weekends, sick days, just play days – she was there. We would play cards together, she loved to play gin rummy, and it was always a well-matched game. When I would win she would say, “oh can’t you let an old woman win?”, with that wonderful smile on her face. On days I was sick from school she would come over my house and do a puzzle with me, I cannot imagine how large a single puzzle made from all our puzzles would be. Also every year when my aunt and uncle and cousins (with whom she lived) would go on vacation I would go over her house and we would have sleepovers. We would watch ‘The Brady Bunch’ and make tuna noodle casserole for dinner and blueberry pie for dessert. Also, since she was a night owl like me we would stay up late in her room reading until we fell asleep.
I remember all the times we spent together, all the drives I took her on as her sight worsened and we did not want her to drive. She would take out the car anyway, she was not one to be told what to do. She was the healthiest eighty-seven year old woman I knew, and had looked the same since I was born. Every year on her birthday, September nineteenth, I would wish her a happy twenty fifth birthday and she would laugh and tell me I was too nice but that I did not have to make her feel better for being thirty.
She loved every single one of us so much, it is hard to imagine a world where that is not present. I would always get a card from her, no matter the holiday; my favorites were the Valentine’s Day cards. They were pink and usually sparkly, because she knew I would like that, and they always said ‘Love, Gram’ on the inside. Simple yet perfect. In fact, I think most cards she got me were in some way glittery or had cats on them, she knew I loved cats.
So it turned out I did know what to say, and I started telling my mom all the memories I had of Grandma. And more than any thing else we did, we laughed, because she was just so funny. She always knew what to say, or she always had her literalness about her that was just so, well, her. There were also tears, and many more to come, but we still smiled when we thought of her, and that is what she would have wanted.
Going into the hospital was not a new experience, I had been in hospitals a lot before, but I was afraid to see her. We went to a cornered off section and I saw her, lying on her hospital bed, quiet and seemingly sleeping, except for all the machinery and medical things in and around her. Her breathing was shallow and her eyes shut softly, it was hard to believe she was drinking wine and eating a steak dinner the night before with her sister in law. But that was Grandma, partying all the way out. The doctor said I could hold her hand, at first I couldn’t, I was afraid as soon as I would touch her she would die, that I would set something off, something would go drastically wrong and I would lose her forever. But seeing my mom hold her hand made me able to as well. So I held her hand and cried a little. I whispered in her ear what I would want her to know before she left, that I loved her very much and that I would keep drawing flowers and taking pictures of irises, because those were our favorites. I told her I would keep on doing well in school and that I would take care of mom. I held her hand in mine and it was like holding a newborn babies hand, when they have new strength and they hold on just enough so that you know that they are real.
I went in and out of the room, in and out of the hospital, we were there for hours. My cousin Katie was the furthest away, she had just taken a flight out to Florida that morning and was taking one back in that night. We prayed that Grandma would at least hang on long enough for every Grandchild to say goodbye. And she did, we all know she loved us, and when Katie got in much later that night Grandma was still holding on.
We had her moved into a single room, we had decided to not take her to another hospital, she had always said that if something happened to her she did not want any kind of surgery, she just wanted whatever was suppose to happen to happen. I stayed there until night and then had a friend pick up my brother and me to go home. Mom stayed at the hospital for what seemed like forever, and though it was improbable I knew we all wanted the same thing, for her to wake up. So long as she was lying there, breathing softly we knew there was some sort of chance she could come back, our wanting made it so we knew.
A few days later at night she passed quietly as my cousin Marit held her hand. My Mom and Aunt Chris were there too, a ring of women around the family matriarch, like a famous painting of a saint.
There I was, four months later, stirring my mashed potatoes, my too mashed- mashed potatoes, knowing that she would have loved to be there. Looking around I saw all my aunts and uncles, my cousins and my brother, my mom and my step dad, and my Great Aunt Mimi (Grandma’s younger sister), I knew we all missed her. But I also knew, as I looked around that she was still here, in every one of us, in our eyes, mouths, faces, mannerisms, voices and hearts, she was there, but we knew that our mashed potatoes would never be the same.
