I stood in the hospital room with the rest of my maternal family, watching my grandmother's heart rate slowly decline. Outside on the neighboring low roof, two pigeons on the ledge bit each other's beak, until finally one pigeon got sick of it and lugged himself up on top of the other one and sat there. The bottom pigeon leaned over, knocking the other pigeon off, and flew away. One by one, my family members left the room. I remembered the time she came to our show in Dallas, and met Tom, and gave me a "small thing" (read: small country) of delicious homemade chocolate chip cookies. We later won DCI, and all the cookies were devoured by myself and a few other devoted Phantomettes and Raiders.
After the rest of my family had left the room, I stayed around for a couple more minutes. I leaned in, and held my ring up to her face.
"Look, Grandma, we won! Thank you for watching me perform. I remember you really liked it, I hope you were proud. I'll miss you, Grandma. I love you.............................................Thanks for the cookies."
