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Lately I’ve been thinking about another not-so-pleasant thought: mortality. I know it’s a pretty morbid concept to have on your mind, but I just can’t seem to shake it.

I guess it’s because all around me, things have been changing. And they’re changes I do not like. For one thing, I’ve been anticipating the upcoming holiday season, and I can’t help but notice the wrenches that have been thrown into our usual holiday traditions. In my family, it used to be that both of my grandmas would host Christmas Eve parties, and we’d drive from one to the other. Now, the parties on one side of the family have been moved to December 23rd, and the other side of the family takes turns hosting amongst aunts and uncles. Like it or not, I suspect my Christmases will never be the same again. I have to face it: no one’s getting any younger here.

It breaks my heart to visit my Grandma B and see her the way she is. She’s stuck in a nursing home. She’s not going to move back home again. Half of a curtain-partitioned room has become her home. All day long she lies there in bed, some days not even bothering with the effort of changing into street clothes and opting instead to stay in the hospital gown. She doesn’t even try to get better – she doesn’t exercise or socialize much. She has given up on herself. Now, every time I see her, she looks just a little bit worse. The wrinkles on her face are just a little more delineated, her once rosy cheeks are just a little more sallow. The smile that once shone on her face is just a little more wan each time; the lilt in her voice loses a little power every day. She’s a prisoner in her own body, condemned by her body and her mind to a life of – well, nothing.

And every time I see her, a little part of me gets mad at her. She doesn’t ever try to help herself, and she is constantly complaining. Once, fed up with it all, I asked her to name one good thing that had happened to her that day. She had no response, and I just couldn’t keep my composure. I had to use the bathroom all of a sudden. That little part of me just wants to scream, let it all out. Go ahead and get mad at her for once, try to knock some sense into her.

But I know I can’t. I know the day is soon coming when her name will be nothing but a memory, a reminder of times past. The day will come when she will die. And I know I will cry. I know I will grieve. I know it will be one of the hardest things I’ll ever have to overcome. I’ve tried to prepare myself for that fateful day. But I know I can’t. I know I’ll never be ready for that to happen, whether I’m there when it happens or not, whether or not it’s expected or sudden. I know I’ll never be able to say goodbye. Not when it happens. Not at the funeral Mass. Never until I myself go.

And so I know I have to savor every moment I have with her now. Even when she frustrates the heck out of me, even when she yells at my mom or greets me with a barrage of complaints on the phone. I love her, even when her ungratefulness gets the better of me, when she wants to cancel Christmas, when she desperately tries to spend money she doesn’t have. But I love her too when she calls me up just to share a pun or find out how my day was, when she pulls me tight and wraps her warmth around me for a hug, when she’d drag herself out to the computer to email me advice and condolences when my Grandpa Bob died. I know I’ll go back and read those emails when it happened; I saved them for that purpose. I know I’ll weep for her, but I also know I’ll manage a smile through my tears. I know a smile, however tiny and tight-lipped, will creep across my face as I read a joke she’s typed or fondly recall memories of the “avalanches” that would accidentaly happen on the sides of my favorite Italian cream cake, when she’d insist a cleanup crew be called to get rid of the awful debris.

I’ll never say goodbye; I will always remember her. As long as I live.

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