I'm normally not lost for words when making a phone call. In fact, I am a pro at filling in the awkward gaps and silences.
But this call, the one I have to make in an hour or so.
I honestly don't know if I can.
My grandmother is old. Very old. And now she is dying. She can no longer speak, but she can hear us.
Her rosary beads, worn with devotion, are wrapped around her wrinkled, frail hands and she can no longer move her fingers along the beads.
(As a fellow Irish woman I can say without malice she has been dying since I was born, and has greeted every illness and every winter as her last one, needless to say they have not been)
But this is it.
She moved back to her native Ireland last year.
My mother and father are currently strapped in aeroplane seats flying across the world to be with her. I can picture my mother's white, anxious face. Already grieving the loss of her mother, yet praying and hoping she will get there in time to say goodbye.
And I?
I have to phone my grandmother.
What do I say?
I had planned to prattle on about the children, work, anything except the truth.
But a wise friend said to me. "Say goodbye and tell her that you love her."
That's when I started crying. And I can't stop.
So how the hell do I pick up the phone?
ETA made the call, floods of tears, my brothers all called, floods of tears. My parents arrived. She has gone from death's door (actually halfway through it) to sitting up, eating and singing. Feels a bit like the boy who cried wolf. Will keep you posted....