"Look out the window, honey. Do you see?"
I did not see.
"Not on the ground darling, hanging in the big pine, straight ahead."
"Oh yeah... now I see what you mean." Meme's breath expels as she pushes her permed head back against the plush beige recliner.
"I knew you would see, Suzie. I knew you would."
I struggle for the right question to ask. One that won't give me away. One that will make my grandmother reveal what it is we are looking at.
"Did you try and get Mom to see?" I stab in the dark.
"She looked, once, but she didn't see them so I didn't ask her again. Between you and me, she and your Dad think I'm losing my head." Meme's pupils dilate whenever she talks about "losing her head."
"When did you first notice them?"
"They came to the trailer, out on the squirrel tree. I was feeding the birds and there they were. I was scared of them then,
but they never come closer to me than the trees. Don't they look charred or something? Are they burnt?" Meme is leaning forward, except for her head, which is tilted back to look through her bi-focals.
"I don't think they're burnt, just black." I try to be an authority on something I can't see.
"Oh my, there she is! See her? See the lady? For some reason, she's never in the tree. That one just stares and stares at me. She's short, like me, isn't she?" Meme tests me.
"Just your height, Meme."
"She's brave, that one. Yesterday she waltzed right up to the window. Does she look mean, to you?"
"I think she's just curious about you. Wants to get a better look is all."
"She spooks me a little."
I cross over to draw the blinds.
"I think if you pull the shades, Meme, that'll signal them to leave you alone." She's too agitated by what she sees. I don't like it.
"I don't want to make them cross with me." Meme twirls her thumbs around and around one another.
" Oh, they won't be mad. You're just telling them you want some privacy. They understand that."
"That woman showed up the other day, like she owned the place."
"Come sit with me. I need you to warm me up." Meme smiles for the first time all morning. I tuck my self under her arm and she pulls the afghan over us.
"I'm not doing so good, darling."
"SSSShhhh," I mouth selfishly. The last time Meme had hallucinations was 1983.

"Hello, Strawberry's Records and Tapes, Harvard Square. Mom? What's wrong?" It's the middle of the day. "Who died?"
"No one's dead, honey, but your grandmother.." A searing pain winches itself around my chest. A Harvard student holds out his money. I look at him and his Def Leppard album wondering how he could possibly be buying bad rock and roll when my Meme is ... Twenty or so customers mill about in the background like Manson's gang.
"My grandmother what."
Mom's voice is the definition of calm. "Honey, she had a heart attack but they've stabilized her. She's doing just fine now, but she needs by-pass surgery."
"I'll come right home, right now."
"Honey, you don't need to. Dr. Petrovich has set her up to go down there."
"What do you mean, down here?"
"She's going to have surgery at Tufts Medical School. I thought since you're there already, that you could be her primary care person." My mother has tossed me the life line, something to do.
The Harvard student says, "Come on, I don't have all day."
"Neither do I,” I reply and walk out of the store.

I try to screw my head on straight and listen to the doctor. He's going over the procedure. Meme is nervous. Her johnny keeps gapping open in the back and she slides her hand awkwardly over her shoulders to clasp it shut. I help her. I am her safety pin.
"After we have pumped you full of fluids and sedated you a little bit, we'll wheel you down to the OR."
"Operating Room?" I say too loudly. Meme and the Doctor look at me as if I've said my first words.
"Right. Then we'll put you under general anesthesia and lower your body temperature. The operation is very stressful on your body. We like to get you functioning at your lowest possible level."
I feel as though I'm doing that right now. I swallow the bile that comes up into my throat.
Dr. Petrovich informs us that he will saw through Meme's breast bone like she’s a tiny game hen.
"Saw?” I ask. “Like a carpenter saws?"
"Yes, sort of like that. Only a much smaller saw." We all laugh at the butcher's, eh, doctor's funny joke. "You'll have quite a scar," the doctor informs Meme. She doesn't look at all like any of this will be happening to her. I can't stop the throbbing in my chest where her scar will be.
There are many other unpleasantries to listen to: veins stripped from Meme's leg to replace the clogged ones in her heart, some sort of stapling that will close up the enormous incision on her leg. I think I read somewhere that carpenters moonlighted as doctors in the Middle Ages. Saws and staples. Heck, my Dad could just open her up in his workshop. Close her, too.
I realize I am avoiding my duties. I close Meme's johnny tighter. She wriggles uncomfortably. The doctor stops talking.
Meme looks at me.
"Any questions, Mrs. Buker?"
"Ah, how long is the surgery?" I ask. My first intelligent question.
"It depends. Could take anywhere from six to ten hours."
Meme and I hold hands.

On the day of the surgery, I am driving my mother to Boston from Maine. Traffic is unbelievable. My mother flinches every time I change lanes.
"Mom, will you please stop that? You're making me nervous."
"Well, you're making me nervous. Couldn't you just pick a lane?"
"Not if you want to get to the hospital in time." That shuts her up. I'm petrified we aren't going to make it to see Meme before they wheel her to the OR. Our bickering juts out of knowing that if we don't see Meme now, we might never see her again.
At five to eleven, I wheel into long term parking. Five minutes before the scheduled time. Mom and I sprint across the lot and into the hospital, dodging interns as we go.
"There she is!" I shout.
Meme cuts a fine figure. Pumped full of fluids and denture free, she lolls forward on the gurney, slurring.
"Oh there they are. That'sh my daughter, my baby and my grand daughter. Shee? I shaid they'd come. Aren't they pretty?"
Whatever they have given her I want.
"Shuzey, get my wedding ringsh from the man. Don't I look fat? I'm sho puffy. Look." Meme is trying to lift up her johnny.
"You look great, Mom, you'll do fine. You come out of that operation, you hear me? I'm not done with you yet." My mother holds her jaw like a vice grip while she tries to keep Meme from flashing the whole ward.
I slip Meme's rings on my finger and hold her face in my hands.
"We're counting on you. We'll see you in six hours, you hear? I love you. I love you."
"Oh if I wush a couple yearsh younger, " Meme looks up at her driver, adoringly, as he whisks her away.

As Mom and I make our way to the waiting room, I watch a doctor tell a family some bad news. The family falls over itself in dispair. It can go either way, I tell myself. Two hours slip into four. My Aunt Elaine shows up. She and Mom hug for a long time. Four into five into six into ten. The world has spent a day without us. Meme's surgeon removes his fetching cap as he walks toward us. The baggies on his feet are spattered with blood. It can go either way, I remind myself as I find my legs.
"She made it. She's in the ICU recovery. You're welcome to go see her but let me just warn you, she looks pretty beat up." We follow him, a soft train of women, thanking God, thanking God, thanking God.
The doctor's warning does not stop my stomach from lurching towards my mouth. Gory details in sensoround. Spinningly, I search for some part of Meme that looks regular. Not her hands, black with bruises and full of fluid, not her chest with the fresh sewn wound, not her hair tinted with blood. Not her eyes wild with pain. Not her eyes that don't flash with recognition. The tube in Meme's throat is so fat I choke on it.
"We're going to remove that mouth tube, if you'll excuse us for a minute."

"Thank God, it's killing me," I mutter to no one in particular. Mom and Aunt Elaine watch the procedure while I try to rest my eyes on something uncut.
"Lon? Where's your father?" Meme's horse whisper breaks our hearts.
"He'll be by pretty soon, Mom." Grandpa has been dead for seven years.
"Oh look, it's Chucky Howell." Meme points painfully toward a small step stool with a blanket on top. I start laughing. Meme is angry with me. I keep laughing. Mom nods her head toward the door. I am bent over Meme's bed with tears streaming down my face.
"Chucky Howell is six feet tall," I explain. “He’s not a baby anymore…he couldn’t be on that stool.” I am practically choking.
No one else is laughing. I hold my sides and head out of the ICU to look for my grandfather.
When they move Meme out of the ICU into her own room, the hallucinations keep coming. Scores of residents, accompany Meme's doctor on his rounds. Meme picks one out of the crowd, "Hey it's Joe Cupo. It's our weatherman, channel six. Hi Joe. Keeping track of the cold fronts?" Mostly, her forays into the non-present aren't so funny.
"Eva, poor little Eva. Come here, darling, I'll hold you, now. You mustn't die, you're the pretty one." Meme cradles her pillow as if it's her little sister, who died from typhoid fever, fifty years ago.
And then there is the constant question: "Where's Lon? Where's your father? Why won't he come to visit?" We stare blankly.

One day she pulls me in closer and whispers, "I wonder how it'll be now, without my woman's parts. They took everything out. Will Lon still care for me?” I don't know who she thinks I am.

Meme's doctor finally figures out that she is reacting badly to her heart medication. Once switched, her hallucinations go away. The drug induced ones anyway.

"Open the shades, darling. I want to see if they stayed." I pull at the forest green shade, hoping the burnt people will be gone.
"Oh, she's a rascal, getting so close to my window. Isn't she the feisty one. Do you think she looks like me?"
"She does a little. Except that you are light, Meme, you are light itself."
"Oh honey."
I believe in the angel of death. My grandmother and I watch her outside the window, hovering, waiting. I pull the shade to buy some time.
Meme holds my eyes with hers.
"Are you scared?" I ask.
"Not too bad, darling."