My Grandmother's Nose

by Sharon Mollerus

The last part of my grandfather I saw was his long nose pointing up out of the casket, beyond the white lining of his last mattress. It was a nose I knew so well: I had fingered its long bumpy surface and examined the hairs sprouting from his nostrils. It was a good large German nose, and I could feel his breathing over me as we sat reading together, him with his newspaper and me with my book.

He always had the smells of pipe tobacco and coffee around him. He would whisper little jokes about my grandmother, who was always making something in the kitchen, a cherry jelly roll, chocolate cupcakes, or a good roast with mashed potatoes for dinner. He would say: "Let's hope she doesn't burn the dinner this time," though she never did. Or he would shake his head and say, "I really hope she doesn't make those liver and onions again tonight. You wouldn't complain would you? You might make her cry." I didn't know what liver and onions might taste like, but they sounded like something I might cry about if not careful. I would nod my head in solemn pact.

I wasn’t allowed into the hospital when he had the heart attack. The next time I saw him was in the room at the funeral parlor, and I took a quick look, like when you stop up your nose to get some bad medicine down. He looked a little collapsed in his face, and he was deeply asleep. I knew he wouldn’t answer me from his body anymore, but I addressed him softly in the direction of heaven as I combed my hair very slowly in the morning trying to get ready for school, and I stared in the mirror as if I might find his face there. My mother would come in and hold me, our eyes both rimmed red with tears.

I would spend Saturdays with my grandmother while my mother and sister went on errands. My mother said she didn’t feel like talking but was glad I was with her. Nobody sat in his chair except his mean old cat who nobody could touch but him. And when Whiskers got up out of the chair and walked to his food bowl, he just looked disgusted with everybody.

A few weeks after the burial, my little sister and I went with our mother to the gravesite. We brought bouquets in our hands, one from each of us, and my mother carried the silver watering can. I ducked down to settle my flowers into one of the holes cut into the granite marker, and then I saw not just my grandfather’s name with his birth and death dates, but my grandmother’s with her birthday as well. Elizabeth Rose Bauer. I don’t remember this part so well, but I was told I screamed all the way from there to my grandmother’s house, and my mother never drove so fast. My bewildered little sister was dragged behind by the arm as we crossed the lawn without using the walkway. I wouldn’t believe a word my mother said to me; nothing could convince me but seeing my grandmother for myself.

We ran into the house without bothering to knock and wait, and I surprised her in the kitchen. I ran up to her and wrapped my arms around her legs. She knelt down to hold me, and my hands went up to her face, even as I was still weeping and incoherent. I touched her chin, her cheeks, and her fine thin nose. I even put my fingers to her nostrils to touch her breathing, to feel the live breathing wounds in her face.

2005