The Last One

I heard the key turning in the lock, my Opa coming back into the house he built with his own hands, the one that had been my home for most of my life, the one I’d been visiting with my four little babies. It was Christmas time 2008. I’d just taken pictures of my girls in pajamas, my Opa with his wool beanie trying to keep his bald head warm, halfway pulling down his mask back when it wasn’t normal to wear them.

I was still standing in the dark hallway where he’d just left me. In my family, everyone had keys to everyone’s house, so I wasn’t surprised by that. But I was surprised by his face. An expression I couldn’t place and can’t conjure again. He crosses the distance and hugs me, whispering: “Ich hoffe es ist nicht das letzte Mal dass wir uns sehen.” I hope it’s not the last time we see each other.

But it was.

The next time I visited Germany, I ran up the stairs to his hospital room. I took two or three steps at a time, trying to outrun the elevator.

My Opa’s wife opened the door, crying. He’d just died a few minutes earlier. Traveling for an entire day, I’d missed him by a few minutes while I was catching my breath in the stairway that smelled of floor wax and disinfecting spray. Or maybe when I was still in the car from the airport to the hospital. I dropped to my knees in front of his bed, scared to touch him, still warm but lifeless.

One morning this week, the cold grey winter light filtering through the crack in the blinds, Rob pulled me close, chest warm against my back, murmuring nonsense words in half sleep. I fought the urge to get up, get my phone, get a cup of coffee, get to my desk. And instead, just receive that pulsating heat, take in the way our bodies fit into each other's curves and angles just so. What if this was our last morning?

It wasn’t, because there have been other mornings this week, but as Zach Bryan says,  “it’s such a fine line between broken and lucky.”

After my daughter’s surgery, she was breathing through her pain and asking for more meds and pulling me down on her bed and begging me not to leave and asking me to hold her until she fell asleep. I laid in her twin bed, half my ass sticking out of the blanket, her sweaty forehead heavy on my chest, clamping her arms around me at 13 the same way she did at 3.

I thought the years of bad dreams and night terrors and sleepwalkers were over. I thought all the reassurances had been whispered, all the backs had been scratched, and all the sweaty curls had been smoothed. But here I was again in the small hours of the morning, in the darkest dark and I realized I was given a gift of one more night soothing a scared child. A child in pain. A child who needed my body close for comfort. Who was calmed just by my presence, although I could do little to alleviate the pain. What a sacred honor to be that person for another human.

In the night, when all light and distraction is stripped away, the stillness holds that bond from before she came out of me, that pulse of blood and heartbeat and knowing each other’s smell inside out. I’ll never not love to kiss my babies’ foreheads right at the hairline, where it still sometimes smells so new.

I go through my day wondering, not if I would have been kinder to the rude receptionist at the dermatologist’s office if I knew this was the last phone call I’d ever make. But instead wondering if I’d reveled more in the experience of feeling the anger rise and bubble and pop for being treated as an annoyance for no reason at all.

I stop in the grocery store aisle (my least favorite chore), not to tell myself I should be grateful for another day of tasks and appointments, but for the small grace of seeing two people laugh when they bump carts, and for picking out a piece of fruit I’ve never tasted. And also, for remembering all the times I’d go to the grocery store when I first moved to the States to buy the few German products they imported, vanilla sugar and potato pancakes and Kinder chocolate, and cry in the aisle, so homesick for my mother and sister.

This past Sunday, my girls asked me to go to the museum. We hadn’t been since they were little and rowdy and always bored. Teenagers now, they wanted to go see the dinosaurs and get Froyo after, for old time’s sake.

And I thought, the last time all those years ago that I don’t even remember, wasn’t the last time after all. I get to do this again. So, we walked through the exhibits together and didn’t read any of the plaques and laughed at the dinosaur with feathers and sternly told each other not to touch anything. And they put their arms around me and their hands in my hands and whispershouted, “mom! come onnnnn,” when I took too long.

I remember the last time my grandmom was lucid on the phone after her first stroke but before the second. I was waiting at the red light on 7^th Avenue, just coming off the Interstate, heading home from somewhere. I thought what if this is the last conversation I’ll ever have with her when we can really talk, but out loud, I said, “You sound strong, Grandmom.”

She did sound strong, and it was our last real conversation.

I’ve catalogued these last moments in my bones. Each little porous cave filled with a moment, a story, a person.

But there are more that I missed. I don’t remember the last time I scratched my youngest boy’s back after a bad dream so he could go back to sleep, before he got too old, and it became awkward, and he stopped coming to our room in the middle of the night.

I don’t remember the last time I told my mom I loved her before she died. I only remember that I didn’t say it in the moments before she lost consciousness.

I don’t remember the last time I danced carefree and confident. I just remember the moment when my kneecap dislocated during the workshop with the teacher I so admired, who was angry I’d interrupted his class and who told me to get off his dance floor as I was writhing in pain.

I don’t remember the last time I ran through a sprinkler or held a newborn or took a nap in a sunny spot on a worn couch. I’m pretty sure that I’ll have more of all of those, but I can’t be certain.

We have an urge to mark and celebrate and grieve the lasts. We have bachelor parties, retirement celebrations, and graduation ceremonies. We ring the bell on cancer wards, and have goodbye sex, and cry at funerals. We wait at the airport, watching our people go through security until they melt into the mass of people, and we can’t see them anymore.

Maybe that urge comes from knowing how many profound moments we’ve already missed. So often, I didn’t pay enough attention. I wasn’t present, didn’t really drink in this other person, this other life and my life intertwining for a fleeting moment. It’s sitting around a fire, that last flickering ember dying. I sit there for so long, I don’t notice the flames getting lower and lower and now the fire is out and it’s getting dark and cold and I realize I’ve been staring into the flames without really seeing them or feeling their warmth.

But sometimes you get an unexpected gift. A child calling in the night. A strong arm wrapping around you for five minutes more. A key turning in the lock. Somebody you love coming back for you because they think and know and feel it might be the last time and they will not miss it. And because of them, you don’t miss it, either.

So when you look at your calendar every year when that date nears, you remember that you didn’t actually miss the last moment. Your last moment was never going to be in that hospital room. It was the quiet, dark hallway. He called it.

And only you know that your Opa who grew up on a farm and built you a home with his own hands, probably stood outside that door for a moment, considering whether or not to come back in, because he was not the “dramatic” type.

But he did anyway, for reasons you’ll never know, so now you get to have this moment, a sparkly rock to tuck into your pocket.

And when you stick your hand in the pocket and feel the smooth stone, it makes you just a tiny bit braver to give the moment what it requires:

You walk through the door

You make eye contact

You say the scary thing

You hold on

You let go.

Originally published March 12, 2024

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Daily Co-Writing and Monthly Reading Lab: I have been experimenting with a daily co-writing space and monthly reading lab for a couple of years now, and both have been consistently meaningful and fun for me, so I want to see what will happen when I open them up to more people. You.

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