The Sweater
by Ainsley Boyd
I was cleaning out my closet, getting ready to go back to school after the Christmas break. In the back of the closet I come across a blue woolen sweater. My grandpa had found it when he had been going through my grandmother’s closet. “The warmest sweater”, my mom had said when she had given it to me. That must have been in the summer.
I take out the sweater and try it on. The sleeves are too short. I wonder where grandma wore it last. I feel my eyes well up.
The times I saw her wear it most was when we would go for walks along the river near their condo. We would often go in the early spring when remnants of stubborn snow still clung to the flooded banks of the Humber River. We came here often, grandpa with his walking stick, grandma in her sweater. We’d skip rocks and listen to the birds returning for the warmer weather. There is a picture of us sitting on a piece of driftwood there. She is wearing the sweater.
After our walk we go back to the condo, 75 Emmett Ave, 1616, and eat a lunch of brown beans and bread.
Then maybe we’d go for a swim. She’d wear her shower cap to keep her hair dry. Her hair always got wet when she played with me in the pool. Or maybe we’d have a quiet afternoon. Me sitting on her lap in her easy chair, watching the planes fly by out the balcony window.
They moved out of that apartment to Kitchener on November 15, 2002, to be closer to their children. Everyone would say they moved just in time. Two year and five months before she fell and broke her hip. A little over three years left as her health speedily declined.
I just want to go home.
My dad had called; She’s in palliative care.
I came home immediately.
I saw her twice that weekend. Saturday March 22, 2008 I lay in the bed next to her reading to her from Psalms from her well-used Bible. At one point she had opened her eyes and looked toward me with a contented sigh.
Psalms 103:11, “For as high as the heavens are above the earth,
So great is his love for those who fear him.”
I just want to go home.
On Sunday March 23 I had been in her room with my grandpa and their four children.
I love you. See you again. I had said through walls of tears as I left her bedside that evening.
March 24, 2008. It had snowed during the night. My mom had left to go back the nursing home, a half hour drive. She must have been about half way there when I called her. I was about to return to Toronto for school. At 8:30am I received the call. My aunt on the other end managed to say, Grandma has gone home to be with the Lord. Before her words were lost.
I just want to go home.
See you again.
