Pleased To Meet You, Ms. Grant

I have no idea where this came from.

*********************

Ms. Grant fought to keep the loneliness from taking her some place where she didn’t really want to end up. She had spent enough time by her husband Dean’s side that she figured she had earned the extra space on the bed. The last thing she needed was to wind up right next to him in their burial plot mere months after his passing.

The pancettas were clearing the way nicely for the roses to take top spot in the garden. This was her life now, and nothing else came close to it, not cooking, baking, pottery, painting, none of it stood up to the wonder of growing living beings that could potentially grow up to be some of the most beautiful things ever sprouted from planet earth.

A rumble from up on high shook Ms. Grant, as if it wasn’t just a message for the town that it was going to rain, but it was a message for her that it was going to rain, and to protect her blossoming children of the green. Ms. Grant pursued her digging for the moment, but another rumble thrashed the clouds around and gray swept across the sky, almost pouring from a cup of space and stars. The gray convinced Ms. Grant to stop and call it an afternoon. She placed all of her tools in the garage, cleaned up, and made some tea.

The window invited her for a show. She sat on the chair left to her by her grandmother nearly fifty years ago. It was a comfortable old thing, red velvet with gold rhinestones outlining the entire frame. Ms. Grant went to great lengths to ensure that the chair would last her just as long as it did her grandmother. That time was almost here, but she chose not to think about it.

It was amusing to see how Ms. Grant could ignore the inevitability of death, seeing as how it rang her phone nearly every day. Before Dean passed away, a friend of theirs, Geena Halloway was introduced to the six foot drop, and after that Dean’s good friend Hector Gacias came down with pneumonia. Had he been younger or healthier, his chances of surviving would have increased, but because of his old chain smoking habits, and a kidney that spent its last ten years hanging by a limb courtesy of decades of alcohol abuse, his life wasn’t meant to be extended.

Everyday, it was as if Ms. Grant was losing people. She still thanked the almighty for keeping her daughters safe, and marrying quality men, and for producing the greatest grandchildren in the world. Now if only they’d stay away from her garden whenever they visited.

Despite living alone, Ms. Grant never felt like the house was empty. The days would go on, her television programs would show, and the news continued to be depressing. She stopped watching it regularly shortly after Dean’s funeral. Occasionally she would tune in, watch a few minutes of it, but it was always too much for her; too much violence, destruction, sadism, all of it - - too much. Watching the news made her appreciate the small community she lived in. New York, Los Angeles, Detroit, all those large urban areas, always with their gangs and their gun fights, police abusing their authority, priests enacting and unforgivable sin, sometimes right within the house of God himself. It disgusted her, nearly to the point of tears, but she was stronger than that. Being married to an ex-marine, and the daughter of a coal miner, made her not only tough, but patient as well.