This Time Last Year - Camilla Basham

My name is Liz, I was named after my grandmother Elizabeth Ann Keener, she died of Alzheimer’s disease this time last year. I remember her lying in the back room of my aunt’s house during her last days, listening to Hank Williams and being fed one of those protein drinks that Auntie had blended up with a Snickers bar. Auntie would sit patiently brushing Grammy's hair getting her ready for the date she swore she was going on as soon as Bill got back from the war. Seems Bill was Grammy’s first love and had been shipped off during WWII back in the day. She had loved Bill but could never find the voice to tell him. Grammy had been married to Grandpa Joe for forty years before he passed away the year before, so she had hung her confused dreams on the hopes she once had as a young girl growing up in Biloxi, Mississippi.

Grammy died that night at the dinner table. We were having Auntie's Meatballs and spaghetti, with a salad made with tomatoes from Grandpa's old garden in the back, sweet tea and hot corn bread. Why do I remember what I had for dinner a year ago, because that night sitting at the dinner table, when Grammy stood for the first time in two years and found her voice to shout "Bill" at the top of her weakened lungs, she collapsed onto the table sending all of the above contents violently onto my lavender Sunday dress, the one mother warned me not to get a stain on, and landing silently onto the cracked green linoleum of the kitchen floor.

I didn't want to look at Grammy dead, her hair caked in tomato sauce, cornbread and sweet tea, so I did what any kid would do and made time stand still, I stared at the mess on the floor memorizing every ingredient as they formed a sickening soup that spread to my mary janes.

And I just sat there and sang a song in my head. The next thing I remember was mom telling me in her stern voice, "Snap out of it, Liz. People die everyday. She had her life." And there I was sitting in a car with mom, who it seems had picked me up from Auntie's house to take me home. I woke from a kind of dream just then and as I watched the wind shield wipers dance back and forth on the wet glass, I asked God under my breath if it was a sin to not want to grow up to be like my mom and I prayed that empathy just sometimes skipped a generation.