Waiting on a Plane

I'm sitting in the C terminal of the Philadelphia International airport, waiting for my connecting flight to Fort Myers. Most of our dear friends and family know why I am going to Florida: my grandmother, the woman for whom my daughter is named, is dying. A week ago she had a fall and by the end of the week, we learned that she has stage 4 lung cancer that has gone to her liver and into her bones. On top of this, she has developed pneumonia and a serious blood infection. She doesn't have much time and I pray I make it in time to see her.

Grandma is 88 and has lived with leukemia for over ten years, managing it with transfusions and medications and her own iron will. We knew that eventually she would succumb--we all do--but given her remarkable ability to bounce back and continue, this feels more than a little surreal. A week ago she was still riding her bike to the store for groceries.

I am afraid to write the words that describe how I am feeling here, lest they render me a sobbing mess in front of the travelers around me, but I also feel like I need to write something, or at least to mark this moment in time, for myself and for my gram and for my kids. I am so very grateful that she lived long enough to know great-grandchildren, long enough, even, to play with and enjoy them. Last night Paul put together a DVD of footage we've shot of the kids over the years, including the trip we took to Florida when Rudy was just two years old. In it, my grandmother sits in her teal easy chair in the living room, throwing her arm out to catch my toddling son as he scrambles past her, laughing.

Rudy meets his great-grandmother. January, 2006

Two years later, the Josephines size each other up. (2008)

Rudy & Gram, 2008

As I sit here, amid the rush and hurry of travel, all I can think about are the countless flights I took as a child to visit the house on Quesada Avenue, all of the gates I arrived at, my heart racing, my eyes scanning the crowd to find--every single time--the smiling face in the picture above and a tiny, sparkling woman jumping up and down, singing, "My baby! My baby!"

She won't be there to meet me today, and the feeling in my stomach is not a happy anxiousness but an anticipation of an entirely different kind. But I'm glad I'm here in this somehow comforting place, my children, my husband and my future waiting for me back home, and all of the love of my childhood--of my whole, lucky life-- waiting for me in Florida.