She would have laughed

I have avoided writing about my grandmother lately, feeling I have nothing left to say on the subject. Once every fourteen days I see her. For an hour or two I sit across from her and force conversation and speak louder than is normal and keep a cheerful tone. I watch her eat food she isn't even tasting. We talk about things that aren't really happening and don't talk about things that are.

I feel like there's nothing left of her, of the person she once was. I tell myself she still knows who we are, even if peripherally, and that is positive. She plays solitaire on a little table in her room with a deck of cards that is missing a few, a joke hidden in there I see and choose to smile at. She would have, the old her, the sharp her who would not recognize herself today. She would have laughed at the joke.

Goodbye Gus

Yesterday I learned that someone I knew not very well but always liked very much had died. I found myself sadder than one should be over the death of someone they did not know intimately, was neither a family member nor a close friend to and I thought about why this was. He, like me, was a restaurant owner and he lived it in every breath he took.  Watching him greet his regulars, embrace them like family, remember their orders....it was a thing of beauty.

I think the truth of it is I see myself and my husband and my grandmother in his story. I am reminded that my grandmother will likely soon die, that one day the restaurants my husband and I own will be closed, meals there eaten by those that came faithfully to our counters but a memory. I am reminded of the impermanence of everything. 

Life has a way of marching on, through death and illness and the little silly stuff in life that seems so big and is always quickly forgotten. The passing of Gus reminds me of what I want my life to be, the imprint I want to make while I am here. The very best part of owning restaurants is being allowed to be a part of other people's lives, the special moments and the ordinary ones. Looking back on one’s life, I think the ordinary moments become the special ones.  Like all the mornings I spent at that diner that Gus' family had since the beginning of time, often hungover, eating eggs and drinking coffee and planning ways to make my life better, those ordinary moments have become special to me.  Rest in peace dear Gus.