When my granddaughter, Cadence, was 3½, the first story she wrote and illustrated on her own was “10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1” on lined paper. The 7 was backwards, the 8 snowperson-like. She printed the word GO and drew a square with a round opening in its center, a tall triangle on top, and two side fins. Orange flared out the bottom of her rocket.
I saved it, and that page has become a comforting yet stark symbol for me at age 77, and my siblings: We’re on our last countdowns.
My younger brother died several years ago. My older sister had a stroke and is paralyzed on part of her right side. My older brother has Parkinsons and I can barely hear him on the phone.
What’s coming for me? When? How can I embrace remaining years as possibilities?
Do I have five more so I can see my granddaughter graduate middle school? I try to count down 5 4 3 2 1 with the innocence and wonder of a toddler. Or maybe I have nine years and can help her launch from high school? 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1, I say with feigned child excitement.
Honorary Cousin Sharon, beloved matriarch of our extended family, has terminal cancer. Recently, wheelchair-bound, she boarded a glass-domed train in western Washington State en route to Chicago with her two sisters. Sharon’s last fling up and over the Cascades and Rockies to see the mountains she loves.
A longtime friend is in a fracas with four different kinds of cancer.
My daughter’s father showed down a brain tumor, but his lungs are ricocheted with inoperable ones.
Death in myriad holding patterns, looking for opportunity. When will my remaining sibs GO? When will I?
When she was 2, Cadence experienced her first family death. Great-Gramma Ga, my mother, died on the December solstice three months shy of 100. My daughter and son-in-law played violin and guitar at the memorial service, on what would have been Ga’s 100th birthday. I cried with joy and sorrow as Cadence clung onto one of her mother’s long legs and sang “I’ll Fly Away” with them.
In preschool that fall, she cut out purple, gold, and pink papeles picados and learned about Day of the Dead. I texted her photos of elaborate skeleton violinists from altars in Puebla, Mexico where I was working, all because Ga studied art there decades ago. When I returned home, I told Cadence about following paths of orange marigolds (cempasuchiles) up to ofrendas in strangers’ houses where you learned about people who had died that year. I gave her a picture book about the movie “Coco,” authentically set in Mexico.
Later, Cadence saw it. “I loved the movie but it was a little scary.” Next Dia de los Muertos, she asked to make an altar in her home for Great-Gramma Ga.
I doubt I’ll live to be a great-grandmother, but if I do, what small things might I teach them about death? Or about telling stories? What might be the first story they write on their own?
And what will be the last story I write before my countdown: 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 GO!
Janine Roberts, professor emerita at UMass Amherst, lives in Leverett.