2 pounds of minced meat from Afro-Jack’s
1 jar of fresh marmalade from One-eyed Susan
1 pound of fresh manure from Pac Man
It hit me with a loud thwack before I could say ‘Gunny’.
I pulled the gardening glove off my face and threw it back at her. Of course, she was better at ducking it than me, betraying her ninety turns around the sun.
Gunny, my grandmother, cackled at my miss but frowned as her gaze dropped to the shopping list in my hand.
“Write it down, you goose!
“Sorry, Gunny!” I tried to feign sincere remorse. To the world she was Gertie, Gertrude, Trudy but for me she has been my Gunny ever since I couldn’t pronounce Granny.
She harrumphed and turned her back at me squatting like a toad to retrieve her gardening glove.
I pulled a face at her behind her back. Her weekly shopping list had always been the exact same. But I knew better than to argue with her. She wont give two hoots before spanking me soundly like when I was a grumpy, orphaned five year old that arrived at her doorstep. My mother, her only child, died in an accident and my father was never in the scene. Gunny’s home, her garden and her eccentric traits have been my haven ever since.
I crumpled the shopping list.
“I saw that !” She clucked without turning back and without a warning came another loud thwack.
========
Right at 10 am she wheeled out her Bat Mobile, her locomotive wheelchair. Gunny loved to turn around a joke. Someone once called her an Old Bat and she named her wheelchair Bat Mobile. Ever since she dresses up as Batman every Halloween and zooms around the houses on her Bat Mobile, whacking unsuspecting children with her stick.
She wheezed past my car pulling her tongue at me. I slowly drove out my car and headed out to the university. Couldn’t miss a day, considering I was a lecturer there. I taught history, the only common interest that I shared with Gunny. Exactly at 10:07 I saw her entering the post office. Of course, every Thursday she eagerly awaited a letter from her friend Beth who had long settled in rural Devonshire and as set in her ways as Gunny. Instead of using the telephone they preferred to write letters. I happened to read one once. A scrawny font and all of two lines that begun with a swear and ended with another. Everything in between just summed up to ‘Hope you are breathing’.
Gunny had a way of attracting all the odd-balls as her friends. And she loved to honor them with quirky nicknames – Afro-Jack, One-eyed Susan and no prize for guessing what she called Beth.
Days passed by and our lives worked on a clockwork schedule. Me with my lecturership and Gunny with her predictable ways.
Like a well-fitted bedsheet that had no creases.
But there were signs. Her hair was a fuzzy ball of silver. Her mumbling grew lower and prayers louder. Faint mutterings of ‘the day of reckoning is here..’ floated through closed doors. With every passing day the little ball of dread in my stomach grew bigger.
No book, no syllabus covers how to go on with your life when the only person you love grows older. No matter how hard you try to stall time, it slips through like grains of sand. I mentally prepared myself every day. The doctors had confirmed the prognosis, and her advanced age did not help either.
She was restless this morning. Beth’s letter yesterday was a blank piece of paper. No words exchanged. Gunny seemed fidgety and on the edge. She scribbled the shopping list herself today and threw it at me before fetching some eggs and bacon. She watched me listlessly as I ate. Every bite hitting the deep pit of my stomach. Sensing my unease, Gunny placed a clammy hand over mine and smiled.
“You know you have your mother’s eyes. She would have been proud of the life you’ve earned yourself.”
“You are scaring me Gunny, why are you being kind to me today?” I tried to lighten up the anxiety that had begun to carve my stomach like a pumpkin on Halloween.
I was never good at letting go. But I could sense the futility of holding on.
The chair screeched as Gunny stood up slowly. She whispered against my temple but my breath was too hitched to catch her words. “love.. care.. my baby… took her… angels call….. vidaniya..” Her words slurred, sounding foreign to my ears. She kissed my forehead and turned towards her rocking chair at the edge of the window. Overlooking her garden, she settled in, calling out towards the door, where I stood holding my tears… “Need to rest for a bit. Don’t forget the shopping list, you imbecile goose.” She cackled and coughed as I closed the door.
==========
There was no obituary, she didn’t want one. No funeral, she hated people staring at her. I knelt at her grave, reading the epitaph “Stop dawdling and get on with your life, you goose.”
Placing her favourites from her garden at the grave, I stood up with my hand in my pocket. I felt it, the shopping list, her last one.
6 pounds of minced meat from Afro-Jack’s
3 jars of fresh marmalade from One-eyed Susan
3 pounds of fresh manure from Pac Man.
