The one good thing about living with her during those years had been the Findlays. Nanny and Pop, as they'd instructed me to call them, were the grandparents every child wishes they had. On the alternating weekend that I wasn't visiting my father, my mom found one reason or another to dump me on Nanny and Pop, and they never hesitated to take me. They were my constants during those years, and I'd missed them desperately when I'd moved forty minutes away to live with my dad.
Fortunately, my dad had been good about allowing me to maintain a relationship with them. He was smart enough to know that cutting off the people I considered to be my grandparents would've gone over like a lead balloon. I'd visited the Findlays every other weekend for at least one night; they were always in the bleachers for my cheerleading competitions—even the ones that were out of state—and they attended both my junior and senior high graduations. They were two of the most important people in my life until nine weeks ago when they passed away within hours of one another.
It was a nightmare, something I'm still struggling to deal with. Nanny passed first, very suddenly in her sleep. The tone of Pop's voice when he called that morning to tell me she was gone is something I'll never forget. If heartbreak were a sound, it was his the way he spoke when he said she was gone. I raced out of my house and drove like the wind to get to Pop so that I could be by his side when the funeral home came to take Nanny away. Colin arrived less than an hour after me, and his parents showed up about ten minutes after that. We all stood together and prayed as the hearse took Nanny away.
I flash back to that day a lot, looking for a moment where maybe there was a clue that Pop was about to die too, but there's nothing. He was heartbroken and sad, but he didn't seem ill. It was the first—and obviously last— time I ever saw him cry. About two hours later Colin's dad, Carson, picked up soup and sandwiches for lunch and the five of us ate it at the table together. After we finished eating, the men had gone to the funeral home, and I'd stayed behind with Colin's mom because she wasn't getting around well.
As bad as the day had been it only got worse when Colin and his dad walked back into the house two-and-a-half hours later, without Pop. In a voice thick with emotion Colin had been the one to tell his mother and me that Pop had died. We hadn't believed him until he and Carson explained how it happened.
After they’d finished agreeing on all the arrangements, the funeral director had left the room to give his secretary the obituary so she could call the paper. Colin and Carson told us that about a minute or so after the director left the room, Pop, in the middle of nodding his head at something one of them had said, abruptly stood and smiled. “It’s time for me to go,” he’d said before he hugged his son and then his grandson. “I love you all. Kiss my girls for me.”
They understood he'd meant Colin's mom and me, but were confused about why he was talking like he couldn't do that himself. Then he held out his arms as he took three steps across the room like he was going to hug someone.
"My Gracie," he'd said.
Colin and his dad were understandably confused about why Pop was talking to his wife like she was there. They never got to ask what was going on since the next thing they knew, Pop crumbled to the ground, dead. He was just there and gone from one minute to the next. Colin performed CPR, and the paramedics were there within minutes, but it was too late.
Losing two of the most significant influences in all of our lives rocked our worlds, to say the least. Because of that, I'll never be sure if what happened in the days that followed was just a moment of insanity brought on by grief. The only thing I can say about that is it didn't end well.
Before the drama between us, Colin was the person I fantasized would be my husband someday. Some might say that it was nothing more than a case of hero worship or even wave it off as some form of weird attraction because he was once a big deal in sports. He'd been drafted about four seconds after he graduated from this university and was then in the NFL for three years before a torn ACL sidelined him for good. He took two years off after that and then went back to school one state over to earn his MBA. After graduation, he took a job there on the coaching team. Granted, coming here isn't a big move—it's only about a two-hour drive—but it is a big surprise. Why he's picked up his life and moved here is a mystery—one I'll likely never get an answer to, considering the way things stand.