AllFreeNovel
Share Us
I watched Grandma Rosie’s eyes as ten-year-old-me asked if I could watch TV while we waited for the dough to rise.
I watched her mouth form the words, “Yes of course, Bubbelah.”
And then, while the younger version of myself hurried up the stairs, I tried to hold onto Bubbie.
“I’m sorry I left you to make the bread,” I told her.
I felt myself grasping at the edges of the memory. Ten-year-old me didn’t have any more memories of Bubbie here. She just had memories of Sabrina the Teenage Witch. Specifically, the episode where Sabrina tells her friends she’s a witch.
The threads were unraveling quickly. “I wish I had more memories with you,” I whispered before I lost them.
Bubbie’s soft, rosy cheeks turned up in a slight smile. “Ah, but here you are Bubbelah.”
I felt a jolt of electricity as the threads stopped unraveling, the focus suddenly clear again.
I wasn’t drifting anymore.
Instead of watching myself sprawl out on the bed and watch Sabrina tell her friends the truth about being a witch, I was still in the kitchen with Bubbie.
It was more than that, though. Before, I had been a fly on the kitchen wall—a voyeur, I guess—watching the interaction. It had been kind of like a movie.
Now I was in the kitchen. And Bubbie Rosie was looking at me intently, her hands still covered in flour.
The feeling spread through me like sunlight, and for the first time since I’d disappeared into the hills, I felt a spark of joy.
“Bubbie? You can hear me?” I’d expected the words to sound choked, like they would if I were trying to squeeze them out through all my feelings if I were alive. Instead, they seemed to drift into the memory with me, perfectly clear, caught by the current that surrounded me and Grandma Rosie.
“I can hear you, Bubbelah. I’ve been waiting for you.” Her eyes crinkled with joy and then softened with sadness. “I had not expected to see you so soon.”
“You’re alive? I mean, not alive, but—I don’t understand any of this. Is this heaven or something?”
Bubbie Rosie’s face broke into a smile. I wasn’t sure whether we could hug. I doubted it. Not like before, anyway. Physical sensation had died when I died. But the joy that filled me to the brim and the love that radiated from Grandma Rosie’s voice was as warm and as comforting as any hug I’d ever had while I was alive. “I don’t know the answer to that question, Bubbelah.” She looked down at her hands, covered in flour. “All I know is that we are here together, in this memory. That somehow it still connects us.”
“How …” I struggled to put the pieces together. “Is there like, a god or something? What have you been doing all this time? What happens now?”
Bubbie’s smile softened. “I don’t know the answer to those questions either, Bubbelah. What I know is that the people we loved on the other side are gone. I mourned you, like you mourned me when I died. But I have learned, as you know now, that the people we love are not gone forever. That everything we ever loved, ever did, ever said, ever read, ever experienced, comes back to us. See, here we are together.” She gestured around the sunlit kitchen.
“So, you live here now, in this memory?” I asked. “And some of my other memories?”
Bubbie nodded. “In a way, yes. Like you live in mine. It’s the tapestry we wove together. The threads still bind us.”
I felt a shadow of despair creep into the joy. “We can’t make any more memories together, though. It’s just … like a movie?”
She shook her head. “Ah, that is what I wondered at first too. But Bubbelah, there are so many movies you have not seen.”
I stared at her in confusion. She continued, “Those threads, they branch out forever, if you know the way to go. Lifetimes of threads. Mine, yours.” She gestured around us. “So many threads. Ima is here. Satva is here. I will show you.”
Ima. Mother. Her mother, my great grandmother who I had never met. Satva. Son. Ben, my uncle who had died of an overdose when I was a baby.
I stared at her in amazement. “I don’t have any memories of Ima, though. She died before I was born. And I really only met Uncle Ben once, right after I was born.”
Grandma Rosie nodded. “That doesn’t matter anymore, Bubbelah. We couldn’t see so many of the threads that tied us together while we were alive. Those threads are visible now.” She paused, then added, “If you know the way.”
I shook my head. “I don’t understand.”
Grandma Rosie brushed off her hands, and a cloud of flour sifted through the air in front of her. She looked thoughtful for a moment. “We can follow the threads together. The story I told you about your mother, when she was a little girl carrying spiders from the house under paper cups? We can visit that memory together. I can show it to you. Because I was there. Even though you were not.”
I suddenly understood what she meant, and the shadow of despair disappeared. So many memories. An eternity of memories stretching backward forever. “Show me,” I told her excitedly. This meant I could meet my uncle Ben. I could meet Ima. I hadn’t lost my family forever. Yes, I’d lost some of them—for now. But in a strange way, I’d also just found the ones I’d lost.
