“Did great-grandma have a glitch at the end?” asked Maggie, stopping her 4th grade math homework to talk for the tenth time in twenty minutes.

Her mom was sitting beside her at the small circular kitchen table overseeing everyone’s schoolwork while periodically jumping up to check the casserole. After her last peek in the oven, Lucy had settled to quietly studying the paper she had found in her grandmother’s hands the day she died. It was hard to believe it had already been a week ago.

“A glitch?” asked Lucy, blinking.

Maggie nodded enthusiastically and her brown pigtails bobbed with her head. “Yeah, ya know, like what happens to computers when they get a virus. A malfunction.” Maggie pointed to the paper in her mom’s hands, “Looks like a glitch to me.”

“Grandma wasn’t a computer or a robot, genius,” sixteen-year-old Tim retorted in his usual know-it-all manner; “People don’t glitch.”

“In a way they can.” Maggie chomped loudly on her pink bubblegum. Then she tilted her head to the side uncertainly, “Can’t they?”

Lucy chuckled as she glanced back down at the paper in her hand. She could see why her daughter thought of a glitch. The word love was written in shaky cursive about a hundred times on the notebook paper.

“Maybe you’re right, Mag.” Tim was thinking of his sister’s short attention span with her homework. He had been trying to help her at his mother’s insistence, but his patience was at its limit. “If anyone should understand human glitches, it would be you.”

“Be nice,” warned Lucy. However, it was apparent his insult went over Maggie’s head, who was now busy blowing pink bubbles the size of her face while doodling on the side of her scrap paper.

“Just sayin,” he laughed; “Besides, great-grandma’s lists were always intentional. They were always about our huge extended family.”

Lucy had an instant flashback to all the lists she’d recently written while her grandma dictated. They had titles like, THE COOKS IN THE FAMILY (and their best dishes), ARTISTIC FAMILY MEMBERS (and their preferred type of art), THE FAMILY INVENTORS (and what they invented), THE BEST FAMILY VACATIONS (where and why), FUNNIEST FAMILY STORIES (who, what, when), and so on.

“That’s perceptive of you, Timmy. And here I thought you weren’t paying attention on our visits.”

“I listened a little,” he shrugged. “I took a personal interest as her favorite.”

Maggie’s gum popped loudly and flattened across her face. She began peeling it off as she protested, “You weren’t her favorite, I was!”

“No, me!” Hayley joined in suddenly, looking up from her coloring book. She pointed to herself with a chubby finger that had purple nail polish splattered on it from Maggie’s efforts at being a manicurist with an ever-squirming hand.

“That’s funny to hear you all say that because I used to always think I was while my brother swore he was, and we both got in a fight with our cousin once who was convinced he was. Plus, my mother always said she was the favorite child while her brothers and sisters argued they were.”

They all burst into laughter as they thought of their numerous aunts, uncles, and cousins. Then Lucy added, “I realize now that we all were equally favored. That was Grandma’s rare gift–she had the ability to make each of us feel special, to make us each feel like we belonged, and to focus on the best parts of us while ignoring the worst.”

“I think she was an angel,” said Hayley seriously.

“You may be thinking that because of her vast collection.” Lucy’s practical mind visualized the hundreds of angels in display cases, on tabletops, and even cross-stitched into pillows in her grandmother’s home.

“She did look like an angel at the end, though, Mom,” reasoned Maggie, thinking of the last time they had seen her. They had walked into the sunroom where she was lying on the couch. The sunlight had been streaming over her peaceful face, creating the illusion of a halo.

“I saw it too,” admitted Lucy, remembering the way she had reached for her hand, thinking she was sleeping. She had been surprised by the cold stiffness instead of the usual soft warmth. Her hand was resting on top of the notebook paper Lucy now held with the pen still upright in her hardening fingers.

“She came as close to an angel as you can get on earth,” said Tim, with an uncharacteristic tenderness to his voice. Then he ruffled the top of Hayley’s silky hair and said, “She’s with the angels now.”

Hayley smiled and clapped her hands. “I bet she likes that!”
It wasn’t hard for any of them to picture it, she would feel right at home.

***
Later that night, after the girls were tucked into bed, Lucy was trying to create a sense of order in her chaotic life by compulsively cleaning every nook and cranny in their tiny apartment. She had never thought she would be doing this parenting thing alone with her ex-husband married to someone else, while she was working a job she didn’t like and living in a place she didn’t own. Yet here she was at forty-two, living the unexpected, unplanned, and uninspired life.

Lucy was scrubbing fiercely at an invisible spot on the kitchen countertop when Tim strolled across the well-worn pathway to the pantry. Her son’s predictable bout of hunger usually came only hours after being served a delicious home-cooked meal. He grabbed a party size bag of potato chips then leaned against the sparkling counter. He watched his mom clean while shoving handfuls of crunchy chips into his mouth. He was either unaware or unconcerned with the crumbs that were dropping onto the freshly mopped floor.

“Ya know, I’ve been thinkin’ about that list Great-Grandma made,” he mumbled.
“You have?” Lucy couldn’t hide her surprise that the child she never saw engaged in anything as much as his phone or video games was still thinking about something so sentimental.

“Yeah, it just seemed different from her other lists and not just because it was the same word on repeat. I mean, the word love itself still had to do with family, right?”

“Hmmm, yeah, right,” Lucy nodded reflectively.

“But there was something else that was different.” Tim crammed more chips in his mouth and was so busy chewing that he didn’t notice his mom looking at him with raised eyebrows.

She was fighting the urge to lecture him about his poor eating habits, and instead said, “Well? What was different?”

He gulped down a large glass of ice water before answering. “It didn’t have a title. All her lists had titles. That was always the first thing she asked you to write.”
“You’re right, it was. She was very systematic.”

“I think she wanted you to write the title. I think she made the list for you.”

“For me? Why?” Lucy’s stomach jumped at his suggestion.

“Because, out of our family, I was the one she asked to fetch things whereas she always wanted Maggie to read a book aloud and she loved to sing to Hayley while holding and rocking her. So, our roles were the helper, the reader, and the snuggler. You were the chosen scribe, and she knew you were on the way over.”

“Hmmm, you’re right; she liked to make each of us feel useful and needed in her own thoughtful way.” Lucy looked up at her son who had grown taller than her that summer and was even growing the wispy beginnings of facial hair. “Since when did you become such a deep thinker?”

He tilted his head in thought. “I guess since I watched Great-Grandma prepare to leave this world. There’s a lot you can learn in the watching, if you keep your eyes open.” He shrugged his shoulders and crinkled the chip bag closed haphazardly before shoving it back in the pantry. “Of course, I could be wrong. Maybe she was just having a glitch, like Maggie said.” The phone he had shoved in his back pocket began to ding with a text. He looked at it expectantly and a slow smile crept across his face. “That’s this cute girl I’m talking to in class. I gotta text her back before she loses interest. Goodnight, Mom.”

“She’d be lucky to have you,” said Lucy, as he leaned down to give her a hug.

“Goodnight.” Lucy smiled as she watched him saunter out of the room with the phone once again stealing his attention. He may have matured, but he was still a teen boy. She thought about him being a part of her grandma’s legacy. He carried pieces of her with him, just as they all did. Even though she was gone from this earthly life, she would live on through them. It was a comforting realization.

Lucy decided to stop her impossible quest at having a spotless home and instead picked up her grandmother’s list off the table. This time she looked at it with Tim’s words lingering in her mind. She read the word love and whispered out loud,

“What were you trying to tell me, Grandma? I’m afraid to give it a title. What if it’s the wrong one? I don’t want to ruin your final list.”

She could practically hear her grandma saying the same thing she always said when Lucy doubted herself, “You know more than you know.” So many times, she had tried to argue with her that she didn’t, that she didn’t know anything, that her life was one big failure, that she wanted to quit, that she needed direction. But her grandma wouldn’t listen—she was the master of selective hearing.

Lucy would beg her, “Please, Grandma, can you tell me how to fix what is broken? I need to know.” That had been her question worded in varying ways during the final months of her grandma’s life. “Everything is broken. How do I fix it?” She couldn’t quite bring herself to say that she was the thing that was broken. Her grandma wouldn’t have heard her if she said it anyway.

Lucy stared at her grandmother’s last list in confusion, then looked up at the ceiling searchingly. Hoping for a divine intervention she asked out loud, “What do you want the title to be, grandma?” When no answer came, she decided to read the entire page aloud to see if it would make more sense. She began, “Love, love, love, love . . .” At first, she was monotone, but the more times she said the word aloud the more meaning it carried. By the end she was expressively reading, “Love, love, love, love, love, lovvvvvvvvv. . .” Her lips were tingling from the reverberating of the final “v.”

Silence enveloped her, and with it understanding. Her grandma had finally given her the answer to her question of late, “Once something is broken, how do you fix it?” The answer lay within the last list. With tears streaming down her cheeks, Lucy finally realized that she knew more than she knew.

Her grandma had shown her the answer by the way she had lived. She wasn’t saying that all love could be fixed, she was saying that all things could be fixed by love. Love was limitless . . . love for oneself, love for others, love for God, love for learning from loss, love for growth that comes through hardship, love for life with all its ups and downs. Love was the ultimate answer.

Lucy breathed in deeply as she picked up her pen. In bold, confident lettering she wrote the title across the top: HOW TO FIX WHAT IS BROKEN. Peace flowed over her. Her grandma’s last list was now complete.

Grandma may be gone, but that didn’t stop her from guiding.

 

Kate Houser Snare has a bachelor’s degree in English and a master’s degree in Elementary Education. She was an elementary school teacher in both Florida and Virginia and enjoyed teaching writing/literature to young learners. She loves writing creatively anywhere, anytime, and on anything she can find when inspiration strikes.