Bayamon, 1920.

"Don't marry an ugly girl," she said in Spanish
from half my height, shaking her index finger
and lowering her head enough
to stare at me with her one good eye.
I laughed more comfortably than I should have
and walked down the stairs to tell my mother
what the Old Lady had come out with this time.

The next day my mother asked me to watch
my grandmother so she could go to the funeral.
My mother's uncle had died, but my grandmother
wasn't being brought to the wake or funeral
for fear that she'd suffer a heart attack
due to the crowd, not to mention the trauma
of seeing her eldest brother who had raised
her and her siblings during the Depression
on a small farm in Puerto Rico
after their parents had died prematurely.
It was an executive decision made by my mother
and one that I supported.
The Old Lady's dementia was kicking in sporadically
and helping her forget.
We wanted it to be permanent.

"I'm sorry that I'm sad today. My brother has died.
Father God gives me the strength to deal
with these things, but it's still difficult.
Tomorrow I could be the one to go."
I rubbed her back and kissed her cheek.
"Not yet, not yet," I told her.
I know my mother will want me to write
something to read at that funeral.
I know I won't be able to do it--
the reading part, that is--
so she'll just have to live forever.

Her maternal instincts to feed me took over
and distracted her from her grieving.
We made some coffee together
and she chuckled as she admitted
that she needed me to turn on the burner
since my parents wouldn't let her use the gas stove.
"Have some cookies," she told me five times.
"Where is your mother? When will she be home?"
I knew then why my mom had jokingly asked me
to take her out back and shoot her when her mind goes.
The questions. The broken record. All day.

One can only drink coffee for so long
so we moved the party to the living room.
Another mistake on my behalf.
As she sat next to me on the couch
her eyes teared up.
"That's my husband," she said
pointing to the large oil portrait of him on the wall.
"He was killed in a car accident before
your mother was even born. I told him to be careful.
He was stubborn. Still, he was a good man.
I didn't want another after him."
What was I supposed to say to that?
More coffee?
I rubbed her back again as she wiped her eyes.
"That's me as a young woman in the other painting."
Seeing herself young and beautiful again
alleviated some of the fifty-four-year-old agony
of losing her spouse.
That stuff about it being better to have loved and lost--
yeah, I've got some land in Florida to sell you, too...

All went silent and her mind shifted gears
as we stared through the sliding door
at the feral cats playing in the back yard.
"They know," she said as she laughed.
I wasn't sure what it was that they knew
but I nodded my head in agreement.
Then she saw the painting of her dead husband again
and told me the tragic story as if I'd never heard it.
That cycle repeated itself twice until my mother
finally came home.
I'm not sure whom has it worse:
the senile person who has to recall a life's worth of pain
or the people who have to hear about it each time.

"The ceremony was beautiful," my mother told me
after answering my grandmother's barrage of questions.
"I'd never seen the folding of the flag before.
One of the soldiers played 'Taps' and there wasn't
a dry eye." I pictured the widow accepting the flag.
My great-uncle served in World War II
and they'd honored him for it in this way
sixty-three years later.
It seemed a good send-off.

I walked into the kitchen to say goodbye
to my grandma.
She asked me if I wanted some coffee.
I hugged her and said I had to go and see a man about a horse.
It was a send-off
though not quite as good.