The following morning, my sister called first thing with no new news. That, we knew, was bad. I drove into the office in an attempt to feel normal. Distractedly, I did what I could in the way of work. This was interrupted before noon with a call from my sister. She was at the hospital and they had told my family that my grandmother was terminal. Her organs weren’t working on their own and it wasn’t likely that they would. They got my grandfather’s permission to take her off the machines. They kept my grandmother on morphine. They were moving her to a private room and were advising that it could be days before she died. She would not return home.  The bomb had been dropped. I was numb. “You need to be here. She’s asking for you,” my sister said. I didn’t want to go. I had been dropping work since this ordeal began over three weeks prior, and I think I thought that if I delayed going, I could delay her death.

After a brief internal struggle, I grabbed my purse. My knitting was now left in my car due to the fact that I had left work suddenly to go to the hospital enough times to warrant it. I arrived at the hospital and set off for the fourth floor. I had hoped it’d be two or five, a different floor always meant progress. Four was bad; it was a step in the wrong direction. As I turned the corner, I saw my family spilling from a doorway into the hall.

I went into my grandmother’s small room; she was barely conscious when I arrived. Someone leaned in close to my grandmother and said, “Nola’s here.” I moved to her bed and held her hand. I didn’t have any appropriate words to say. “I’m here, Maw-Maw. I love you.” She nodded. I don’t know if she knew I was there. She continued to call for me and my one brother not there. “Nola’s here,” someone would say. My grandfather was nervous. He kept rattling the coins in his pocket. Once my parents showed up, he seemed a bit relieved. After about ten minutes, everyone left my grandparents alone. He told her that everyone was there with her and that it was okay for her to leave us. We then shuffled back into her room. We all took turns holding her right hand. The left one had the IV of morphine in it. She looked very small in the bed.

The night slowly passed. The small room could not hold us all. I went with others to the waiting room. I sat and knitted. “Knit, knit, knit, knit, purl, purl, purl, purl,” I repeated silently to myself. My scarf was close to being done. We’d rotate being in Sunshine’s room. As the night wore on, Sunshine began being non-responsive. She also began reciting names. It started with “Albert, Ann. . .” and moved up the alphabet. She could not tell us who these people were. Some names we recognized: family members and friends. Others, we did not. My grandfather thought she was doing one of the word puzzles in her head that she did every day in the newspaper. My mother thought she was seeing people in Heaven. I don’t know what I thought. I did not think it was a puzzle. As she said names, I’d wrack my brain for a piece of the family tree I’d done. “Alphonse,” she’d say. There was no Alphonse in our family. I knew it meant something, something more than random ramblings.

Around 11:30, we gathered around her room and discussed whether we’d stay the night. I suspected her death was several days away and thus wanted to get a good night’s sleep so that I could continue my vigil in earnest. Others felt as I did. My sister could not be pulled away. Thus it was settled that my sister and grandfather would stay through the night and the rest would return in the morning. As I said goodnight to my grandmother, she had advanced a bit in the alphabet and said, “Robert.” That was the name of her father and the last word I ever heard her utter. She died at dawn.

Although I was close to being done with the loopy scarf, I put it away after my grandmother died. After several weeks, it was bugging me and I finished it. I wore it a lot, and every time I thought of my grandmother. And sitting at the hospital.

Time passed. My sister and I took my grandfather out to dinner. I wore my scarf. Weeks later, it got chilly again and realized I had left my scarf behind at the restaurant. I called, but it had not been turned in. I was devastated.  I thought about knitting another one in the same pattern with the same yarn.  But it wouldn’t be the same—I was a better knitter; it wouldn’t be loopy nor would it tell the same story.

And so it is with everything I knit. The love, sorrow, joy, concern that is running through my mind also runs through my hands and into the work. I wouldn’t have it any other way.