…we sit together in the small living room, balancing plates on our knees and doing our best to keep up the conversation despite the fact that there are some genuinely difficult conflicts unresolved between a few of us. And the fact that some of us are dead.
It’s a surprise to see them, my grandparents. Odder still is the appearance of multiple versions of my grandfather — he sits with my grandmother, each of them in their late fifties, full of good humor and health . . . and he sits next to me in his early nineties, broken and cadaverous, his eyes pits of sorrow.
My mother is there . . . but there is something odd about her. I can’t quite tell what it is and I don’t understand why no one else seems to notice or care…
…and when I wake, I wonder what it means . . . wonder if a call will come today with bad news.