I learned about my granddaughter Emily’s graduation from Facebook.
There she was in her cap and gown, smiling between Laura and her husband.
Nobody had told me the date.
Nobody had saved me a seat.
I mailed Emily five hundred dollars and a handwritten letter telling her how proud her grandfather would have been.
She texted back, “Thanks, Grandma.”
Nothing else.
When I slipped in the garage and fractured my wrist, Laura said she would come after work.
She never did.
When doctors found a lump in my breast and I spent four days waiting for scan results with terror lodged in my throat, I told no one.
Not because I was brave.
Because by then, I understood there was no one to tell.
The hospital intake desk had my emergency contact on file.
That paper knew my children better than they knew me.
It listed names that did not answer.
