The other day I crawled in bed with Grandma while she was watching one of her crime shows. She is always watching some crime show and fussing about me going to Walmart by myself. The only thing she watches besides crime shows is Westerns and somehow, she even works those plot lines into reasons I shouldn’t go to Walmart alone.

When I walked into her room with Eli in my arms, she turned the volume down and helped me prop Eli up on a pillow in between us. This is our favorite thing to do when I walk the kids to their house; prop Eli up and get him cooing (no one gets him talking like my mom) and all four of us girls sit around him like he’s our very own little prince. He did not disappoint on this occasion. He stared up at my grandma with bright eyes and smiled that potent, little smile that makes us all weak-kneed and gushy. He even showed the two perfect dimples that he saves and flashes on special occasions. I’m telling you, he’s quite the gentleman.

“I guess you know about my lungs,” Grandma said, rubbing her thumb over the dimples in Eli’s hand. Just two days before, she had been rushed off to the emergency room in an ambulance with a fire truck close behind. She was barely breathing but managed to flirt with the firefighter, who carried her Officer and a Gentleman-style out of her bedroom. That’s Grandma; can’t contain that Southern honey.

“Yes,” I said. “Mom told me.” An ER doctor who didn’t have time for niceties or Grandma’s honey-sweet personality had told Mom what she, as a nurse, already knew: very little air is moving through Grandma’s lungs. He recommended Hospice and in so many words, told Mom not to waste  time with anymore trips to the ER.

“I may not be—” her voice broke and she looked away. “I want to buy the babies something for Christmas. Ada keeps talking about that chandelier she had in her old bedroom. I want to get that for her. Something real special.”

“Okay,” I said softly. Eli made pigeon noises.

“And I want to talk to someone. A pastor maybe. Get right, you know?”

“Of course,” I said. “I have several friends who are pastors. Would you like me to ask one of them to come see you?”

“That would be real nice,” she said, smiling. She patted my hand. “There’s something else I wanted to ask you.”

“Anything, Grandma,” I said, my mind running through all of the possible things that could come out of her mouth next. Secret wishes? A confession? The location of a mayonnaise jar filled with money?

“Give me a second,” she said. “Let me try and remember.”

We both stared down at the bedspread with the same brown eyes, blinking back tears. Even Eli slowed down his kicking and watched her.

“Oh!” she said throwing her hands up in the air. “Have you seen that show about the people who go to the hospital because they got hurt doing you know what?!”

I was blindsided. “What?!”

“Yesssss!  I think it’s called Sex Sent Me to the ER.” She whispered the word sex, I assume, for Eli’s benefit.

“No, I haven’t seen that one,” I said, still trying to adjust from Grandma’s death-to-sex talk.

“I watched it the other night. There was this fellow on there, and Amanda, Lord, I’ll tell you, he fell out of a tree and had to go to the hospital because him and this girl were, well, you know. IN A TREE of all places! Why, I never saw the likes! They’ll put dang-num anything on TV these days!”

And we laughed and marveled over my baby boy who is just as strong as an ox and has magic-making dimples.

What else is there to do?