Grandmother Jobes

Grandmother Jobes, ninety and tiny, lived alone and knew no medicine beyond occasional rose hips and balanced meals. Alongside her upright piano that had not known a proper tune for decades, she would sit cutting coupons and fastidiously knitting to keep some semblance of posture in her already arthritic hands. Curiously strong, they'd not cease until evening rest at best. Although, if one might pray the rosary in their sleep, bead after worn plastic bead, it would be her. She needed to keep busy to keep the ghosts of solitude at bay. One quarter century had passed since her John L. had passed. She had not much longer to wait to see him again and have her words of undying finally spoken to her in return once more.

Funerals had become her weekly service, but were finally quieting. Though tedious, her attendances, even for those only as distant acquaintances in life, were hatch marks on a prison cell wall or torn rings of a paper advent chain. Each had brought her closer to her own rest of permanence.

There weren't any more pieces of furniture, colored glass, or items left smelling of sweet mildew, whose undersides had not been marked with a piece of masking tape and a name. Her frame could not grow much smaller within its latex glove-thin skin. All those who knew her, loved her for her unbounded generosity and biblical selflessness. Though tiny, she had nothing and everything left to give.

As we pulled away from her quaint white post-war ranch, this December 26th in the rain, dad would honk per usual, and she would return with cursory waves, half-paying attention to us, half to her plants needing tending to.