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23:29 - August 12, 2002
fiddle faddle pt. 2
Tonight we go out to dinner with my grandma. She sees my new industrial piercing and says, 'well, what is the purpose of this?'

'I don't know,' I reply. 'What is the purpose of this?', tapping her left pearl earring.

She laughs. 'Well, mine is at least a usual place to have it have no purpose.'

Well said, Grandma.

After dinner she becomes timid; an unusual trait for her. She's 87 and she knows it; so she usually just speaks her mind and to hell with everyone else if they don't like it. I mean, who's going to start a fight with an apple cheeked white haired old lady? (In the airport, seven months ago, when they confiscated her sewing scissors and nail file before they allowed her on a plane to Syracuse, she got all huffy and said, 'well, I wasn't going to attack anyone with my sewing scissors, but if I get a mind to, I'll just do it with my bare hands.')

Anyway, today she suddenly gets timid on the way home, and asks us to take her to her dead husband's grave ('but not if you don't want to, i mean.. don't feel obligated..'). My father pulls in the gate silently, parks, and leaves the car running. I've never been here before. Once we find the gravestone, I jump and let out a yell: engraved on the rock is not only my late grandpa's name, but my grandma's.

Her hand settles on my arm from behind. 'What would really be scary is if they put the dates under my name as well.' I look again. F.H.E. 1912-1992. MCE - 1915 - .

'You're not dead,' I tell her.

'The space is reserved,' she says, very quietly.

Picking through the grass on the way back to the car I notice a headstone: 1879 - 1983. 'If you think you're so old,' I yell, running over, 'why don't you look at this? 104. You're a spring chicken. Stop saying you can't hear when you can. Stop saying it's your time to die. You're perfectly healthy. You can see and hear and walk and speak and drive and you have freedom to do whatever you want, when, statistically, a woman of your age should be dead. As it is, you can probably bench more than me.'

'I don't want to look at the headstone of a dead woman and be... whatever you want me to be.' She's silent for a moment, looking at the engraving, and then she keeps walking, but she stops holding onto my arm for support. She walks better without it. 'Still though,' she says, almost to herself, 'I AM blessed.'

 

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