My grandmother's last words to me.

I actually think about this a lot more often than I let on to family, friends, roommates -- even casual acquaintances.

It's not for the reasons you may think, either. Well, let's just get this out in the open, then...

July, 1994
My grandmother was not a well woman. She was 69 years of age. She suffered from a multitude of chronic conditions, including [but not limited to:] Diabetes, Heart Disease, Presenile Dementia, Arthritis, ... Various and Sundry OTHER "old person" disabilities. She grew up in the Dustbowl. Rural Oklahoma of the Roaring Twenties and the Great Depression in the United States in the 1930s. This is part of what shaped her mind and attitudes. When she married a young and handsome Navy Ensign in the late 1930s (at age 15), Reform was coming. Why, simply everyone knew she was going to do well. They quickly began to build their family. He was badly wounded in the Pacific Theater of World War II, leading to complications that ultimately led to his death in the early 1950s. She had one child by another man in that time. My mother in 1953. So, out of 18 children upon his death, 17 were his in every way -- but my mother didn't find out until reading my grandmother's diary after her death in 1994 that her "stepfather" was really her father, instead of just her youngest two siblings' father. My favorite uncle was born only two years after my mother, a year after my grandmother remarried. My favorite aunt, however, was born late in my grandmother's childbearing years after a long hiatus, in 1966 -- a mere 9 years before my entry into the family. Some said it was a miracle a woman in her 40s could even have a child in that day and age.

The scene I am about to lay out for you needs this information to be accurate. She had been under the influence of all of these for the majority of my life to that point. Certainly all the amount of my life I remembered to that point. She did NOT like my natural father (in retrospect, I really can't blame her), but not because she saw him for the ass that he was. No... she didn't like him due to his ethnicity. Grandpa Eugene's wound in WWII had developed in her a surprisingly nasty bigotry toward anyone Asian in descent -- especially the Japanese.

I am a quarter Japanese.

Back to the present. Well. The present of the story. July, 1994.

She had been going, "downhill fast," according to the doctors. There weren't a WHOLE lot of us there late that night. Most of her visitors having gone home once visiting hours had ended. There were about 10 or so of her children, including my mother, and various spouses, a few nieces and nephews, great nieces and great nephews and grandchildren (including me -- the one everyone knew was the grandchild she despised most, and NOT including my younger sister, her obvious FAVORITE grandchild). I was eighteen years old, less than a month from nineteen. I'd say there were maybe 25 people in that waiting room, and all of them were there for my grandmother. Some were crying. Most just looked tired.

Now, mind you, my mother didn't know about most of the bad stuff that happened to me throughout my childhood due to me not telling and all the relatives in the know covering for my grandmother (among others).

It was about an hour after visiting hours were over when the nurse started us going in to talk with her one to one for, "one last time," each.

I wasn't first. I actually didn't expect to be asked for at all, truthfully.

My mother was the last of her children to go in to see her. When the nurse called for me, I was genuinely surprised. I can't say that I was going all tear-y at the prospect of her death, but neither was I hoping for her death. I mean, she was my grandmother.

I stood and dusted myself off from the floor (there weren't enough chairs and everyone in the family had become so accustomed to my role as THE second-class citizen, that I just accepted that I was the one on the floor).

I nodded to the nurse and pointed at the restroom, and she nodded in return.

I went into the Men's Room (ugh), and checked my binding -- no need to antagonize her, this may be my only chance to see her again...

I made sure my chest was flat and then went and peed in a stall. I washed my hands and dried them. I turned and looked in the mirror.

Yep. I wasn't looking too good myself. We'd been at the hospital for about 30 hours at that point and I think I had maybe one meal in that time. And that was McDonald's.

I nodded to the haggard girl in the mirror that was trying so hard to live up to her family's expectations that she be a man and "do right" by the family. So much that she was even majoring in a subject in college that was disinteresting because they all expected it. She was the first on either side of the family to go to college, but her father's side hadn't mattered for nearly a decade, due to her father. She shook her head. Don't think about that now. The woman in the other room was the Matriarch of the family on this side of the Pond. She deserves at least the respect of that, right? If the family wants me to be an Engineer, that is what I'll be. I'm doing horrible enough things by becoming a woman instead of the man they want me to be.

I pushed away from the mirror and stared for a moment more into the mirror.

A soft knock came on the door and I stepped toward it, opened it and out into the hall. With another nod to the nurse, I followed her back into the Intensive Care room that housed the shuddering bulk of my maternal grandmother.

She stopped awkwardly at the door and gestured me to enter. I murmured a thank you of some kind and then pushed through the swinging door.

She lay there calm and peaceful, the lines of her face drawn smooth from lying on her back except the ones etched across her brow from the obvious pain. The smell was that mixture of sweat, old person, medicine and sterility of which hospitals always reek. The fluorescent bulbs in the fixture overhead flickering briefly and the hissing and gentle knocking of the machines that were connected to the most frightening person in my life mingled with the soft and rasping breaths she was taking. Punctuated by the quiet beeping that always sounds way louder than it actually is.

I stood there a moment, then circled around and sat in the chair by the bed and took her hand.

I had sat like that for maybe five minutes when she regained consciousness.

"Hrrmm?"

"It's okay, Grandma, I'm here. Do you need a drink?"

"Urrmt."

I lifted the small cup of iced water with a bendy-straw to her lips and she sucked maybe three drops from it. The effort very nearly made her lose consciousness again. I sat the drink back on the table-on-wheels that every hospital room has handy.

I reached around her gingerly and lay my head against her chest.

"Y'know, Grandma, despite being afraid of you all this time, I'm more afraid FOR you now."

There was no answer, save her labored breathing.

"I, uh, I know you've always been kind of hard on me, but I always figured it was because you wanted me to get out and succeed."

Her eyes were focused and sharp, she was perfectly in her right mind as she listened to my unrehearsed soliloquy.

A few errant tears squeezed from my eyes as I breathed deeply and steeled myself to continue.

"I know, Grandma."

Her face didn't change, but I could tell there was a question there now.

"I know you loved me, just like you loved any of your grandchildren."

There was an urgency on her face as she feebly gestured me close.

I leaned in, but she gestured again, and I leaned a bit further, not wanting to crush her.

She mustered her strength and reached up to grasp my shoulder and pull me right down to her. My ear to her mouth.

Then... she spoke.

I will never, as long as I live forget not only those last few words she directed solely at me, but the impact they have had on me every moment of every day since then.

What she said rocked me in my socks.

Struck me to the very core of my being.

Believe it or not, for the first time in my life, I found myself speechless.

I don't think they were her very last words, as I think there were still a couple of people to go in and speak with her that night before the ominous early-morning announcement by the doctor in the waiting room to the assembled crowd that she was gone.

Of course, that part of the story is for another time.

This is about those eight words that were meant totally and completely just for me.

Amazing how much eight little words changed my outlook so entirely.

Well, one of the words was a contraction... should that be counted as one and a half?

Another was slang, so maybe only half a word in its own right, so the total still falls to eight.

Some of the greatest things in history have been said in very few words.

But these words, well, I don't think they would qualify as among the greatest in history...