Then she said: maybe people her age shouldn’t be traveling.
I cannot fully describe what it was like to hear this.
I am not usually a person who has trouble with words.
But there was a moment where the words simply were not available because the thing I had heard was so outside the territory of what I had expected a person to say to my grandmother.
My grandmother, who had been saving this trip in her heart for decades.
My grandmother, who was wearing the blue blouse with the small white flowers at the collar because she wanted to look right for the ocean.
My grandmother, who had said Edwin would have liked this one.
Rose’s hand found mine.
She was small.
She was eight-six and she had gotten smaller with the years, the specific physical diminishment that happens when bones lose density and posture changes.
Her hand was small and her grip was the grip of someone who has decided something.
