I was furious.
I threatened to replace her with a stranger.
And the whole time, she was dying,
and saving every dollar I gave her,
and adding her own,
in a box with my son’s name on it,
racing a clock she wouldn’t tell me about,
to leave him a future she knew she wouldn’t see.
She didn’t charge me for babysitting.
She charged me so she could pay him—
the only way a proud, dying grandmother could find
to keep loving her grandson
after she was gone.
The box is full.
She filled it.
And every forty dollars in it is the sound of my mother
refusing, right to the end,
to stop taking care of us.
