25 years into their marriage my Mom teaches my Dad to make cricket sounds, rubbing her lips
back and forth to mimic the bug. My Dad is surprised at my Mom’s accuracy, that he can do it
too. I am surprised they are still learning after all these years. When my Granny learned that my
Grandad had cancer, she cried in the doctor’s office. It was unusually warm for a March day and
he had turned full body yellow. Later, at one of the chemotherapy appointments before they
placed him in hospice and started the morphine drip, she called to tell me that if he went blind
she might as well too. My Grandad only liked tea when my Granny had made it and the only
person who can teach my Dad the ways of a musician is my Mom. Granny sits like a soldier
when it comes time for the funeral. She cries just twice: when the casket is closed and when my
cousins and I carry him in. The casket feels too light for a grown man’s body, the priest sprays
too much incense, I am seeing relatives that I have never met. She keeps repeating the story of
the night they met, October 1962 on her bike, forgetting that she has told us it before. There is no
formula for 63 years of grief, this time it equates to a tremble in my Granny’s hand as she drinks
tap water from a glass, her telling me that she thinks my Grandad still looks beautiful as we visit
his waxen body at the funeral home. In the car on the way to the cemetery I say that I could only
wish to love someone so much. My Mom chirps, a cricket, and my Dad follows suit.