Next up isBreakfast at Tiffany’s.I know, I know, Mickey Rooney’s character is all sorts of problematic and awful. But I love Audrey’s aura of aloof coolness. She just seems to float above everything. Until she can’t float above it anymore.
I want to float above this.
A knock on my door has me pausingMy Fair Lady. “Yeah.” It comes out as a miserable grunt more than an intelligible word.
Mom peeks her head in. “Grandma is here to see you.”
If it was anyone else—literally, anyone—I would say I’m not up for a visitor. But I’m always up for a visit from Grandma. She’s my favorite person on the planet.
Well…favorite person I actuallyknow, like in real life.
A moment later, Grandma breezes in. She’s past eighty, but she’s as active and spry as someone twenty years younger. Shoot, she could walk circles around me on my best day. She’s short and thin, wearing her silver hair in a short, side-swept bob. Purple-framed glasses, and a pair of well-fitted jeans and a nice yellow sleeveless top. Mom could take fashion lessons, honestly.
She kicks off her sandals and sits on the bed next to me, rubs my hip with a gentle touch. “Hi, honey-bunny. Not a good day, huh?”
“Mmm-mmm.” It’s all I can manage.
She murmurs a sympathetic sound. “Take heart, my love. God has a plan even for this.”
She’s a Christian. The type that says she’ll pray for you, but instead of leaving it at that, she takes your hands in hers that very moment and prays. It can be awkward, at times, because she literally does not care where we are, who’s around, or anything.
It’s endearing.
Mostly.
But days like today, it’s hard to believe in a God who could do this to me. Who could sit up in heaven and watch me suffer, and think it’s doing anyone any good.
I can’t answer. Not even a grunt or a groan.
She hunts under the blanket and takes my hand. Her hands are cool, dry, clasping mine tightly. “Father God, I ask that you help my sweet, beautiful granddaughter as she deals with the pain of her illness. If it is within your will, Lord, I ask that you would take the cancer from her. I ask for healing, complete and miraculous and immediate, in the name of your son, Jesus. Amen.”
I want to believe the prayers do something. Anything is worth believing in, when you’re facing your own end, and soon.
I find the strength, from somewhere, to look at her. “Did Mom tell you?”
“About what, my love?” Her dark eyes are kind. Loving. Patient. Understanding. Compassionate.
“My last visit with Dr. Miller.”
Grandma sighs. “Yes. She told me.”
“I think if God was going to do some sort of miraculous healing, he’d have done it by now, Grandma.”
She shakes her head, smiling. “Last-minute miracles only feel last minute to us. Because our point of view is utterly dependent on our own limited understanding of time. God sees all of time, start to finish, so what is to us last minute, to him is exactly when he means for it to happen.”
“What if there is no last-minute miracle, Grandma? What if I’m really going to just…die, and that’s it?”
“Only God knows what’s going to happen, darling.”
“That’s not much comfort.”
“I suppose not. I don’t have all the answers, honey. I just know I believe that God loves you, and that he’s capable of healing you. So I will continue to believe he’s going to, every moment, every day. I pray for you all throughout the day, Jo. All day. Every day. And I justknowyou’re going to be okay.”
“It doesn’t feel like it.”
“I don’t imagine it does.”
I sniffle. “It’s hard not to be angry.”
