“I’m sorry, Mom.”
“Honey, you stop that now. What have you got to be sorry about?”
“I don’t know. I feel like I should have—”
“Should have what? Never left Minnesota? Stopped Jamie from being Jamie? You could no more do that than keep the earth from spinning.
“You were a good wife to my boy. You stood by him when everyone else had gone; you made him so happy and supported him every minute. Nobody could have taken better care of him. Not even me.”
She looked up at Jerry, who was standing behind her chair.
“Now, Gracie, you know Penny well enough to know that it just makes her teeth hurt to admit that,” he said, smiling through a sheen of unshed tears. “I sure wish we’d been able to come and help you at the end, but—”
I reached for Jerry’s hand. “You drove out at Christmas. I was so happy you did.”
“Me too,” he said. “Helped a lot to see what a nice place it was. Even if we’d had the money, we couldn’t have gotten Jamie the kind of care he needed, not way out here in the country. I know how hard you had to work, keeping him there. I’m just sorry we couldn’t help more. But since we lost the farm . . .”
“I know, Dad,” I said, and squeezed his hand. “I know. We all did the best we could.”
Penny sniffled. I pulled a tissue out of my pocket and handed it to her.
She dabbed at her eyes. “I know he’s in a better place now, but it seems so unfair that he’s gone. It just makes me feel sad. But then I remember that we almost lost him once before. I remember when you and Jamie got married. You were wearing a blue dress with little yellow flowers—”
“And Jamie was wearing a yellow dress shirt,” I said.
Penny bobbed her head, confirming my recollection, and smiled a little.
“Between the family and all the nurses who wanted to be there for the wedding, I bet there were forty people crammed into that hospital room. Jamie was skinny and pale, not a hair left on his head because of the chemo, but he was grinning from ear to ear,” she said as a tear rolled down her cheek. “He was so happy. I remember thinking that he was never going to leave that hospital room. But I was wrong. He got thirteen more years and we got the chance to see Jamie grow up, fulfill his dreams, and find love. He’d never have found the strength to do that without you, Gracie.”
Penny gazed up at her husband. “Do you remember, honey? It was everything we prayed for when he was so sick. In lots of ways, we were blessed, weren’t we?”
Jerry nodded and laid a big, workingman’s hand on her shoulder.
“He was a good son, a good man. And you’ve been a good daughter, Grace. We couldn’t have asked for better.”
After giving Jerry and Penny another hug, I excused myself and went to the bathroom to splash some cold water on my face, an attempt to rally the energy to endure a final hour of condolences before driving back to Minneapolis. I had to catch an early flight to Portland the next day.
Mike and a couple of Jamie’s old friends had urged me to stay an extra day; they wanted to take me to dinner. But the funeral and final medical expenses had wiped out what little was left of my savings, so I needed to get back to work.
Exiting the ladies’ room, I spotted a woman with white hair kneeling in front of my mother-in-law, holding the leash of a silken-coated golden retriever. The dog’s muzzle was resting in Penny’s lap, and she was stroking its head and nodding in response to the woman’s murmured conversation.
“Nan?”
She turned around, then got to her feet and started walking toward me.
“What are you doing here? I told you that you didn’t need to come.”
“I know, but I wanted to. Malcolm is taking good care of the other dogs, including your Maisie.” She opened her one good arm to embrace me. “I’m so sorry we missed the service. There was some kind of mechanical problem in Portland and our flight was delayed.”
“You flew here? You hate flying.”
“But I love you. And Blixen was with me, so that helped,” she said, smiling at her dog, who was sticking close to Penny. “I thought it would be good to bring him. I thought he might be a comfort.”
Penny stopped petting Blixen and looked up at me, her eyes still sad, but dry and calm.
A brief bout of light-headedness reminded me that I’d forgotten to eat that morning, so while Nan and Blixen made rounds among the mourners, I visited the buffet table. There wasn’t much left by that time, just some cheese and crackers, deviled eggs, a little potato salad, and a few brownies.
My mother, who had been talking to the minister, walked over when she saw me putting food on a plate.
“Are you sure you want all that?”
“All what?” I asked, looking at my plate. It held two pieces of cheese, four crackers, half a deviled egg, a tablespoon of potato salad, and a brownie. “The only thing I’ve had today is coffee.”
“Well,” she said grudgingly, “just so you don’t start channeling your grief into food. I’m just saying, you had to work so hard to take off the weight. It’d be a shame if you gained it all back. So many do. The people on that show, the one where they go to that camp and compete to lose all that weight? I read a story just last week saying the winners almost always gain it back.”
“Mom, I’m not going to gain back the weight. I’ve kept it off for thirteen years.”
“I know,” she said, watching nervously as I ate a
