LEV ITATE IS SU E 9
Her Last Meal Sarah Angileri During the fall of my sophomore year of college, my mother and I watched her mother slowly die. The day before Nana was diagnosed with glioblastoma, the three of us were kayaking in the murky waters of Lake Echo, a small inlet lake – more of a pond, really – near Nana’s home on Acorn Ct. (The nut house, as my father called it). There, Nana liked to visit with the birds and other wildlife. It was August; I wasn’t due back for classes for another few weeks. The day was misted with sunlight and, until then, free and clear of bad news. I was out of the water first, and from my vantage point on the shoreline, I could see Nana in her yellow rain slicker, sitting with her paddles stilled across her lap admiring a stork balancing on a single, thin leg – graceful as a ballerina. My mother, seated across from her, kept the canoe balanced. Afterward, with the strength of two petite oxen, she and my mother jostled the heavy wooden canoe ashore through the shallow muck. A few strands of kelp clung to Nana’s wellies, the boots baggy around her child-sized calves. “How old do you feel, Nana?” I called out to her. Nana was chipper, as always. A swingset beckoned nearby. She could not resist hoisting herself onto the plastic saddle and pulling the chains until her small frame rocked side to side. “I feel like I’m forty!” she shouted back. Forty was a decade younger than her daughter standing beside, her brushing her hands against themselves to loosen the stuck leaves and a bit of dirt from situating our canoes together like a champ. Then, with a familiar impulse, Nana made a visor with her hand to catch the murmuration of sparrows performing overhead. My mother only took Nana to the hospital because she noticed, sitting across from her in that canoe that her left eye looked lazy, and that her lip was drooping a little on that same side – possible indications of a mild stroke in older adults. While she waited for the test results, over dinner that night my mother gauged whose head it was in – hers or my Nana’s. 156