great grandmom kay.

I'm sitting at my desk, looking forlornly through the my windows, which are covered in a thin black mesh. Yet I can still see the blue skies, and the green leaves from the green bushes. I can hear car tires swishing past, going way too fast on the 25mph road. I look at the clock., 2:30pm. Only two hours left to go. I came into work at 8:30am, so I can leave thirty minutes early. All I can think about is placing things into boxes. How many times have I moved since I moved out of my mother's house? 1, 2, 3, 4…this would be my fifth time.

My great-grandmother died two days before Valentine's Day. Grandmom Kay, I called her. The last time I saw her was a surprise visit (she lives in St. Pete, FL). She was sitting at her dining room table with her breathing machine and her caretaker. I came in the door and she turned around, startled. "Surprise!" I said. I gave her my Cicada Ladies CD and she grasped my arm and said, "thank you" and "look how grown up you are" and "do you have a boyfriend?" And I said, "yes, I do, his name is Peter". "Is he handsome?" she said. So I pulled up a picture on my phone and she gasped and said, "well, he's a looker!" Then we listened to the CD and she called me a hillbilly about ten times and we laughed and I said, "I'm not a hillbilly". And she said, "whatever you say, hillbilly". Then she died, about two months later. From what I know she was surrounded by her three daughters. She kept asking, "can we just go home?" and saying, "I want to go home." And in her final seconds, someone said, "we're going home", and she looked relieved and maybe smiled and said, "home…". 

When I found out the news I was sitting in Peter's dining room playing Settlers of Catan with Nathan and Eric. I exited the room without a word and sat on the edge of Peter's bed and cried. He came in right after me and put his arm around me and pulled me to his chest. I cried, called my mom, stopped crying, Peter went back out into the dining room, I wiped my face, and finished the game. Then later I went and saw my friends band play at a bookstore. I got to hear the last song of the set. After the show I got coffee from the back room and browsed the books. 

I didn't really tell many people what happened. Death happened. And she's gone. But she's not in pain anymore. And she had a crazy life. Her husband committed suicide in their home when their daughter was young. From stories I heard, he played the banjo on the radio. But wasn't well-known or anything. There's a sepia-tone photograph of him, young, bare-chested, squatting on the grass and holding a baby duck. He looks happy in that picture. But people can look happy all the time, and not actually feel that way.

I don't have any pictures of her. But I do have a picture of one of her daughters, Bonnie Kasarsky. Who is no longer a Kasarsky. This is her in 1959. It's a wedding announcement in the Chester Times and Great Aunt Bonnie wasn't even out of high school yet.

Mrs. Helen Kasarsky. That is the name of my late great-grandmother. May she rest in peace. Finally...