By Sandy Gringas

The only reason we’re having this conversation is she’s dying of lung cancer,
but she’s decided to have cataract surgery anyway. It’s a she’d like to see clearly
as she’s dying kind of thing. So, we’re sitting in the waiting room of the surgical
center, and this nurse comes out with a clipboard. She asks my mother, “When
did you have your heart attacks?” Her pen is poised. My mother looks at her. I
can tell that my mother sees the nurse very clearly. Like the cataracts are totally
gone for a second. But she doesn’t respond. Her lips go all thin the way they do.
There is silence. The I’m not talking to you kind. Her go-to. The nurse looks at
me. I shake my head. I’d like to help out here, but this is the first I’ve heard of
my mother having heart attacks. Plural. The nurse walks away. I’ve been trying
to be better with my mother these days as she’s dying and all, so I don’t say,
What the fuck? And I give myself points for not saying What the fuck. Atta girl.
We just sit there on our plastic chairs aiming forward. Then my mother tells
me, “You just press your hands together very, very tightly.”

---

Sandy Gingras has written and illustrated 25 gift books and a novel, Paradise Girls (St. Martin’s Press). She received The Crime Writer’s Association Debut Dagger Award in 2012 and a 2026 Individual Artist Fellowship from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts for prose. She designs products for the gift industry, owns two retail stores, and lives on Long Beach Island with her husband and a golden retriever named Turtle.