Sunday

I will be breaking my children’s hearts on Sunday morning.

After a week of swimming in Vegas and a Saturday packed with three birthday parties, I’ll be letting them know that their Nan isn’t getting any better. Is never getting any better.

They already know something is wrong. They’re not stupid. They’ve been asking me to sing “Hush Little Baby” to them every night because that’s what Nan sang to them when they were little. Newt skeptically asked about Nan’s age today, and I know what he was thinking: if she’s younger than Papa, how could she die first? And the other night, the kids broke down for half an hour because Tenzin was going to work — they were afraid he was never coming back.

We’ve had more than a year to prepare for this, and now that it’s here, it suddenly has that feeling of the final bits of sand falling through the hourglass — the ones that go dive bombing through the hole and appear to be moving so much faster than the ones that went before them. Suddenly the day is looming, like an anti-wedding with so many of the same logistical parts. The family and friends are converging. Arrangements are being made. And the dress. It turns out that the black dress I’ve been thinking I needed for the last six months has been hanging in my closet, forgotten until today. So now the perfect little black dress that makes me feel a little bit like a ballerina, even though I’m nothing close to a ballerina, will now be the dress I wear to my mom’s funeral. As Newt says, sometimes things are easy, sometimes they’re hard. And sometimes they’re enigmas wrapped in paradoxes in the back of your closet.