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My Grandma went to heaven. She left a couple days ago, but she didn’t pack her suitcase. I was sad because Mom told me she won’t come back.. not even for a visit. I wanted to go see her in heaven, but Mom says it’s not time for me to go yet. I can’t wait ‘till I can go see her there. Mom says it’s a better place. My Grandpa sure is sad that she’s gone. He wanted her to take him with her. I don’t know how come she didn’t. They went everywhere together.
I remember they were planning a trip before Grandma got sick. They had to cancel it so that Grandma could stay in the hospital for a while. We went to go visit her in her room and I gave her a picture I drew. Dad said the doctor would give her medicine to make her better, but the medicine didn’t work. I told Dad that I thought they weren’t giving her the right medicine. But Dad told me that they didn’t have any medicine that could make her better now. He said Grandma had cancer spread all inside her body. I asked my Dad what would happen when doctors couldn’t make her better. He told me Grandma was going to pass away.
I asked my sister, “what does ‘pass away’ mean?”. She didn’t say anything for a while, and then she got up and left the room. But I had already seen the tears in her eyes. I didn’t know what she was so sad about. My brother told me that Grandma was going to die. He said they were going to dig a hole and throw her in there. He said there would be bugs crawling under her skin. He said she would rot away down there until she was only a skeleton. My Mom told me that my brother was only trying to scare me. She told me that it wasn’t true. She said that Grandma wasn’t going to rot away like that. She said Grandma was going to live forever with God in heaven. If I be a good girl, one day I can go there, too.
One day at the hospital, Grandma started acting funny. When I went into the room, she was shaking and crying. She looked like she was very scared of something. I asked Grandpa if there was a monster under her bed. He said, “I suppose there is.” He didn’t seem to care, though. I thought big people didn’t believe in monsters. I didn’t like it there in the hospital that day. I didn’t like the way Grandpa was looking at Grandma. I didn’t understand the look on his face.
When I came out into the hallway, Uncle Jeff and Dad were fighting. They didn’t see me at first, though, because I’m so small and quiet. “You can’t keep hiding the truth from her,” said Uncle Jeff. “It’s not healthy. She needs to know what’s happening to her. She needs to know she is going to die.” My Dad shook his head angrily, “She knows. She’s not stupid, Jeff. She knows this is the end. You don’t have to make this more painful--”. Then my Dad saw me standing there and wrinkled his forehead. He grabbed my hand sharply and walked me down the hall to my mother. Then Mom took me and my brother and sister to the park for the rest of the day. Later on, Dad met up with us and we drove back home. Dad said we wouldn’t be going to see Grandma at the hospital anymore.
Yesterday we went to Grandpa’s party that he was having in this funny house. There were a bunch of big people there that I didn’t know. Some of them were crying. There was this weird box with my Grandma’s picture sitting on top of it at the front of the room. People were going up and putting flowers on it. I went up and smelled the flowers. They were pretty and smelled nice. I tried to get my sister to come and smell them, but she was afraid to go near the box. When she looked up at my Grandma’s picture I noticed she had been crying.
I didn’t like the smell of that funny house. There were candies in the bowl on the table, but they tasted like crayons. A lady came up to me and told me she was terribly sorry. I asked her what she had done. She just stood there, frowning for a moment and then patted me on the back and walked away. I asked my Dad if we could go home soon, but he said we had to stay with my Grandpa for a while. I tried to ask him where Grandma was, but every time he tried to speak his voice would go all crackly.
My Grandma is in heaven now. I can’t go see her just yet, because I don’t know how to get there. My Mom says that if I say my prayers before bed every night and always remember to say grace, God will give me angel wings. Then I can fly up to heaven with all the other good girls.