LITMIR.BIZ

      The inevitable moment arrived when my Popo ran out of strength and we had to call a halt to the procession of students and friends who kept coming to visit. He’d always been a bit of a dandy, and in spite of his weakness he worried about his appearance, although we were the only ones who saw him now. He asked us to keep him clean, shaven, and the room well ventilated; he was afraid of offending us with the miseries of his illness. His eyes were cloudy and sunken, his hands like a bird’s claws, his lips covered in sores, his skin bruised and hanging off his bones; my grandfather was the skeleton of a burned tree, but he could still listen to music and remember. “Open the window to let the joy in,” he’d ask us. Sometimes he was so far gone his voice was barely audible, but there were better moments, when we’d raise the back of the bed so he could sit up and talk with us. He wanted to pass his experiences and wisdom on to me before he left. He never lost his lucidity.

      “Are you scared, Popo?” I asked him.

      “No, but I’m sorry, Maya. I would have liked to live another twenty years with you two,” he answered.

      “What will there be on the other side, Popo? Do you believe there’s life after death?”

      “It’s a possibility, but it hasn’t been proven.”

      “The existence of your planet hasn’t been proven either, and you sure believe in that,” I countered, and he laughed with satisfaction.

      “You’re right, Maya. It’s absurd only to believe in what can be proven.”

      “Remember when you took me to the observatory to see a comet, Popo? That night I saw God. There was no moon, the sky was black and full of diamonds, and when I looked through the telescope I clearly distinguished the comet’s tail.”

      “Dry ice, ammonia, methane, iron, magnesium, and—”

      “It was a bridal veil and behind it was God,” I assured him.

      “What did he look like?” he asked me.

      “Like a luminous spiderweb, Popo. The threads of that web connect everything that exists. I can’t explain it to you. When you die, you’re going to travel like that comet, and I’ll be right behind, attached to your tail.”

      “We’ll be astral dust.”

      “Ay, Popo!”

      “Don’t cry, little one, because you’ll make me cry too, and then your Nini will start to cry and we’ll never be able to console each other.”

      In his last days he could only swallow little spoonfuls of yogurt and sips of water. He barely spoke, but he didn’t complain either; he spent the hours floating in a half-sleep of morphine, clinging to his wife’s hand or to mine. I doubt he knew where he was, but he knew we loved him. My Nini kept telling him stories until the end, when he couldn’t understand them anymore, but the cadence of her voice soothed him. She told him about two lovers who were reincarnated in different times, had adventures, died, and met each other again in other lives, always together.

      I murmured prayers I’d invented myself in the kitchen, in the bathtub, in the tower, in the garden, anywhere I could hide away, and I begged Mike O’Kelly’s God to take pity on us, but he remained remote and silent. I got covered in rashes, my hair fell out in clumps, and I bit my nails till my fingers bled; my Nini wrapped my fingertips with adhesive tape and forced me to wear gloves to bed. I couldn’t imagine life without my grandpa, but I couldn’t stand his slow agony either and ended up praying he would die soon and stop suffering. If he had asked me to, I would have given him more morphine to help him die. It would have been very easy, but he never asked.

      I slept fully dressed on the living room sofa, with one eye open, watching, and so I knew before anyone else when our time had come to say good-bye. I ran to wake up my Nini, who’d taken a sleeping pill to try to get a bit of rest, and I phoned my dad and Susan, who were there ten minutes later.

      My grandmother, in her nightie, climbed into her husband’s bed and laid her head on his chest, the way they’d always slept. Standing on the other side of my Popo’s bed, I leaned against his chest too, which used to be strong and wide and big enough for both of us, but now was barely moving. My Popo’s breathing had become imperceptible, and for a few very long instants it seemed to have stopped completely, but he suddenly opened his eyes, swept his gaze over my dad and Susan, who stood near the bed crying silently, lifted his big hand with effort, and laid it on my head. “When I find the planet, I’ll name it after you, Maya,” was the last thing he said.