The return

I was sitting in my chair, talking on the phone and surfing the web. That same moment, thousands of miles away in another country on another continent, a man's life expired.

I received a phone call last night from my brother informing me that my grandfather had passed away.

I didn't know my grandfather that well, I perhaps met him only a handful of times. But the sadness I felt was for my mom. One year, she loses her husband. The next year, she loses her father. I want to ask God to give the woman a break. But she sounded fine on the phone when I called her. Ironically, she told me she worried about her mother, my grandmother. She said my grandparents had been married for sixty years. Sixty years. What is it like to be with someone for sixty years and have him just one day disappear?

My mom was the eldest daughter of five, the sole child to immigrate to America. And tonight, she is flying back to the mother land.